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Dr. Sylvia Earle to Receive Honorary Degree

From: State University of New York News
http://www.cortland.edu/news/article.asp?ID=364

May 3, 2007 - Renowned oceanographer Sylvia Earle will be awarded an honorary Doctor of Science from the State University of New York at the SUNY Cortland Undergraduate Commencement exercises on Saturday, May 19.

An explorer-in-residence for the National Geographic Society and a 2000 inductee into the National Women's Hall of Fame, Sylvia Earle has conducted more than 60 expeditions worldwide that have involved more
than 7,000 hours underwater in research.

The honorary president of the Explorers Club and the executive director for Global Marine Strategies for Conservation International, she monitored the health of the U.S. waters during the 1990s as the
chief scientist of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

In 1992, she founded Deep Ocean Exploration and Research to design, operate, support and consult on manned and robotic sub sea systems. From 1998 to 2002, she led the Sustainable Seas Expeditions, a five-year program to study the National Marine Sanctuary System.

A native of New Jersey, Earle moved as a teenager with her family to Clearwater, Fla., where she fostered her lifelong interest in marine life and the ocean. She earned a bachelor's degree from Florida State University and both her master's degree and Ph.D. from Duke University.
Her doctoral dissertation, "Phaeophyta of the Eastern Gulf of Mexico," was a trailblazing first-hand study of aquatic plant life that Earle has continued to update.

Earle was a research fellow at Harvard University and then was a resident director at the Cape Haze Marine Laboratory in Florida.

In 1968, a four-month pregnant Earle traveled 100 feet below the Bahaman waters in a submersible Deep Diver. In 1970, she led the five-member, all-female Tektite II research expedition that spent two weeks living in a small structure 50 feet beneath the ocean surface. An outspoken advocate of undersea research, she has written 100 publications about marine science and technology, has produced numerous television programs, and has presented technical and general interest lectures in more than 60 nations.

During the 1970s, Earle participated in scientific missions to the Indian Ocean, the Galapagos, and to waters off Panama, China and the Bahamas. She and undersea photographer Al Giddings investigated the battleship graveyard in the South Pacific's Caroline Islands. They also followed the migration of sperm whales throughout the Pacific Ocean. Their journeys were recorded in the 1980 documentary film "Gentle Giants of the Pacific."

In 1979, Earle became the first and, to this day, still the only human being to walk un-tethered along the sea floor at a depth of 1,250 below the ocean's surface. Wearing a pressurized, one-atmosphere garment, Earle spent two-and-a-half hours with only a communication line connecting her to the submersible that brought her to the ocean depths off Oahu. Her 1980 book, Exploring the Deep Frontier, describes that experience.

In the 1980s, she served on the President's Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere. Earle and engineer Graham Hawkes started two companies, Deep Ocean Engineering and Deep Ocean Technologies, which
design and build undersea vehicles capable of unprecedented maneuverability at great ocean depths.
Earle led research expeditions to study the impact of oil spills during the Gulf War and following the spills of the ships, Exxon Valdez and Megaborg.

A member of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and the World Wildlife Fund Board of Directors, Earle has balanced her married life and raising three children with her scientific research over the past four decades.