UMaine marine sciences

Transcript

Rebecca Van Beneden:
The Earth is composed 70 percent of oceans. Look at the state of Maine. We have over 4,000 miles of coastline. A great many of our industries, our resources are marine-related.

Heather Leslie:
Our identity is deeply linked to the coast and the ocean. We are people who love to be out on the water, whether it’s sailing, or catching fish, or just exploring new places. The ocean is really important to our cultural identity.

Pat Keliher:
Our coastal economy in the state of Maine is huge.

Yong Chen:
We try to find an optimal level of a catch so that both the fish population and the fishing industry can benefit from the fisheries.

Pat Keliher:
That lobster model changed the dynamics in lobster management within the Gulf of Maine.

Neal Pettigrew:
These buoys that we designed are out there 24/7. They’re sending data back to the public and to all scientists every hour.

Dave Cousens:
Every fisherman I know uses it every day to see what the real conditions are then, and look at the forecast of what they’re going to be.

Rick Wahle:
It’s the nation’s largest fishery. It’s Maine’s largest export.

Bob Steneck:
Now, over 80 percent of our value comes from one species. That’s a dangerous place to be.

Rick Wahle:
We try to keep our finger on the pulse of those babies entering the population.

Bob Steneck:
This is a window into problems that are global in scope.

LeeAnne Thayer:
When the eyes appear I know that there’s actually an embryo inside here.

Heather Hamlin:
If we can reduce embryo mortality then, all of a sudden, that increases their bottom line. That’s a really important factor for them.

Ian Bricknell:
We have new vaccines going into fish for sea lice. If we have a major breakthrough there, then, we have a mechanism to control the most damaging disease in salmon aquaculture today.

David Townsend:
The red tides are one of the biggest public health concerns we have in the Gulf of Maine regions. We need to know when to expect these events to occur. We need to know where on the coast to be looking for it first.

Bill Mook:
When you look at the demand for seafood and you couple that with Maine’s enormous coastline, it’s a natural fit.

Paul Rawson:
There’s a lot of opportunity for growth within the industry. To the degree that the university can help, we’re there working with industry partners.

Gale Zydlewski:
In terms of the tidal power development, knowing what is the risk to different fish populations is what we’re trying to get at.

Nathan Johnson:
They’ve been able to develop technologies, methodologies to get to some of the key answers around how marine life interacts with our power systems.

Teresa Johnson:
Marine policy has a special role to play in that in terms of being able to translate all of the work that biophysical scientists are doing to solutions on the ground, so people can understand it and say, “Oh, yeah. That makes sense.”

Rhine Waller:
Everything is all connected together. The deep ocean is connected to the shallow water. The shallow water is connected to the land. The land is connected to the deep ocean. We have to study all of these processes to begin to understand how the world really functions.

Bob Steneck:
We’ve seen an undersea revolution on the coast of Maine.

David Townsend:
Marine science has never been more important in the Gulf of Maine region.

Rebecca Van Beneden:
We have a number of faculty focused on our backyard, Gulf of Maine, but we understand that the problems in the ocean is global.

Heather Leslie:
This close link between human well-being and ocean health is really important to understand.

Rebecca Van Beneden:
Our mission is to educate students in the marine sciences with the goal of promoting sustainability of the oceans.

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