Award-winning journalist and NPR science writer to be Honored Saturday, March 2, 6 pm at Bittersweet Bistro in Aptos
Once a year, Global Oceans honors an individual who has made outstanding contributions to the understanding and conservation of our oceans. This year’s Global Oceans Hero is award-winning journalist and NPR science writer Richard Harris.
Richard Harris has traveled to the ends of the earth to share news and information with us that affects our planet. Since 1986, Harris has reported on science issues for National Public Radio where his reports have originated from the South Pole, the Galapagos Islands, Timbuktu, Beijing, the center of Greenland, the Amazon rain forest and the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro.
Oceans have been an enduring passion. In 2010, Harris revealed that the blown out Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico was spewing 10 times more oil than BP and officials had acknowledged. In recent work, he’s covered Royal Dutch Shell’s trials and tribulations as they seek to drill in the Arctic Ocean, and he’s followed the story of ocean acidification. He reported on United Nations climate negotiations from the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, from Kyoto in 1997, and Copenhagen in 2009. He was a major contributor to NPR’s award-winning 2007-2008 “Climate Connections” series.
Harris is a proud graduate of UC Santa Cruz, receiving the school’s highest honor, the Alumni Achievement Award. He returned to UCSC last spring to give a commencement address, 32 years after delivering the student valedictory.
The Friends of Long Marine Lab will also celebrate the top two UC Santa Cruz Student Research and Education Award recipients, Kane Cunningham and Lisa Ziccarelli.
Honorary co-chairs are Hilary Bryant and Dave Shuman, Shirley and Allen Ginzburg. Reservations required and are $150 per person: [email protected] or (831) 459-3694.
Sponsored by: Deepwater Desal, Brent and Sylvia Constantz, Alexis Party Rental, Wine Sponsors: John and Enid Rusev, Jack and Stephanie Harkness, Shopper’s Corner, and Merritt Taylor
Special thanks to Bittersweet Bistro and proprietors Thomas and Elizabeth Vinolus