BAY MINETTE - The “What’s in the Water?” What we know, what we don’t, and what we need to know,” forum regarding the recent oil spill will be hosted by the University of South Alabama Baldwin County.  Speakers include Dr. Robert Shipp, Chair, USA Marine Sciences Department, and Dr. George Crozier, Executive Director of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab.  "We are seeing and absorbing the acute impact and it will be years before we can access the chronic impacts,” Shipp said. 

Dr. George Crozier received his Ph.D. in Marine Biology from Scripps Institution of Oceanography (University of California, San Diego) in 1968.  Although trained originally as a comparative biochemist, Dr. Crozier has spent most of his professional career in Coastal Zone Management, which might be considered as a specialization in applied marine ecology. He has been the Executive Director of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab at the mouth of Mobile Bay since 1979. As the Director of the Coastal Policy Center at the Laboratory, he is active regionally in most management issues. Dr. Crozier received NOAA’s Walter B. Jones Coastal Steward Award for 1999/2000 and has been honored by the State of Alabama as a science educator. He is currently deeply engaged in the issues emerging from urban sprawl in coastal areas and mitigation thereof.

Dr. Shipp graduated from Spring Hill College in 1964, and received his M.S. and Ph D. degrees from Florida State. During his graduate days he was also an instructor of Biology at Florida A&M.  He has taught at the University of South Alabama since 1972, where he is presently chairman of the Department of Marine Sciences, director of the Alabama Center for Estuarine Studies, and heads the Alabama Oyster Restoration program. He was associate director of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab for ten years. He edited the marine journal Northeast Gulf Science (now Gulf of Mexico Science) for twenty years, and for four years was editor of Systematic Zoology, a premier international journal devoted to evolutionary theory.

He served on the Board of Governors of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, and was president of its southeastern division. He was appointed to the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council in 1991, served as its chairman during 1996-97 and again from 1999-2000, and was reappointed to the Council in 2005, and elected vice-chairman in 2007, and chairman in 2009. The Councils, created by Congress, are charged with management of the nation's marine fishery resources. He is a consultant to the Alabama Coastal Conservation Association.

The forum will take place on Friday, August 27, at 6 p.m. in USABC’s Performance Center at 111 St. James Avenue in Fairhope (corner of St. James Avenue and Summit Street).  It is free and open to the public.

The event is first come, first served.  For more information, please visit http://www.myusabc.com, e-mail usabc@usouthal.edu, or call USABC at (251) 928-8133.