Tuesday 2 July 2013

Yeah Science 12/06/2013 - Rubber Duckies at the End of the Ocean

On the 12 of June, The Yeah Sessions dove for a third time into the wonderful word of science.

Our first speaker for the night was Erik Van Sebille, physical oceanographer at UNSW, talking about the eerily beautiful story of thousands of rubber duckies (aka 'friendly floaties') sent across the world on the churning currents of the ocean, and tying the this into the tricky problems we encounter when considering the impact of garbage, pollution and plastics on ocean life.

Click here to watch the video on youtube, or, cast your gaze below (unfortunately, a technical hitch meant there's no video of the first half of the talk, but we did get audio!)



Erik is an accomplished oceanographer - he's an ARC research fellow at the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South wales, an Associate Investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, and recipient of a 2013 Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) by the Australian Research Council on "Inter-ocean exchange around Australia and its relation to regional and global climate".

You can also watch an interview with Erik on UNSWtv here.


His website is chockers with a bunch of great interactive tools, some of which he mentioned in his talk - be sure to check out Adrift.org.au, where you can simulate the impact of garbage flows, using your very own rubbery ducky!


Get in touch with Erik via Twitter, or through the contact details on his website, here, or read more about the UNSW Climate Research Centre here.

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