Event sponsored by the Friends of San Pedro Valley Park.

Healthy coral reefs are a beautiful sight to behold and we shall have the opportunity to view some wonderful undersea photographs taken by Dr. Luiz Rocha. Regretfully the wonderfully productive ecosystems coral reefs create are under attack, being severely damaged, and declining. Join us for an illuminating talk on the reefs with a world renowned scientist and an elite deep water scuba diver.

The webinar will take place on Saturday, September 12 at 4 pm. Reservations are required, so please RSVP to the Friends’ email: [email protected]

• If you are interested in participating, an RSVP is required. Please send an email to [email protected] before noon on Friday, July 10th. We have a limited participation capacity.
• On the day of the lecture, an invitation to join the webinar will be sent approximately 30 minutes prior to the talk in order for everyone to be ready by 4 pm. 
• The lecture with Q&A will last one hour. 
• Questions will be submitted in writing using Zoom. 
• Q&A will take place at the end of the lecture

About the speaker: Luiz Rocha is the Curator of Ichthyology at the California Academy of Sciences. He has spent more than 5,000 hours underwater studying fishes, and published more than 150 peer-reviewed articles and one book. In addition, his work has been featured in many popular media outlets including CNN, the New York Times, Scientific American, National Geographic, Science Channel, etc, and supported conservation efforts across the globe. Currently his main area of work involves the exploration of little-known deep coral reefs (between 100 and 500 feet depth) throughout the tropics.

About the talk: It’s no secret that corals and the ecosystems they build are declining worldwide. These beautiful and highly diverse habitats exist in a delicate balance between thousands of species, from tiny algae to giant fishes. Lose one link in the chain and you can throw the entire system out of balance. And this is what is happening today, as many human activities are negatively affecting coral reefs more than ever before. But is there hope for reefs? Dr. Luiz Rocha thinks so, and he’ll explain why in this talk that will take viewers on a tour of the most spectacular reefs in the world, shallow and deep.