For further information, contact the MBL Communications Office at (508) 289-7423 or e-mail us at comm@mbl.edu

For Immediate Release: October 22, 2009
Contact: Gina Hebert, MBL, 508-289-7725; ghebert@mbl.edu

MBL, WOODS HOLE, MA—Deborah Cramer, author of Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water, Our World, the companion volume to the new Sant Ocean Hall at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, will explore the ways the sea is essential to all of us at the next Falmouth Forum Friday, November 6 at 7:30 p.m. in the MBL’s (Marine Biological Laboratory’s) Lillie Auditorium, 7 MBL Street, Woods Hole. Ms. Cramer’s lecture, titled Our Water Our World, is sponsored by the MBL Associates and is free and open to the public.

In her lecture, Ms. Cramer will invite the audience to rethink their ideas about the ocean, to consider that in ways we have never imagined—and science is just beginning to describe—all life, including ours, depends on the sea. In her latest book, Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water Our World, Cramer shines new light on the meaning of the sea in our lives, exploring the essential partnership between life and the sea, and how, now, the health of the sea really matters. Pulitzer Prize winner E.O. Wilson said of Smithsonian Ocean, "Authoritatively researched, clearly written, and beautifully illustrated, this book is best of its class."

Deborah Cramer is currently a Visiting Scholar at MIT's Earth System Initiative. She was Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at MIT from 2005 to 2006. Ms. Cramer is on the Advisory Council of the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary and has written two books, Great Waters: An Atlantic Passage (W.W. Norton 2001) and Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water Our World (2008). She has lectured about her writing and the sea on both sides of the Atlantic, at science and maritime museums, at major environmental and teachers' organizations, and at undergraduate and graduate schools in oceanography and journalism. Ms. Cramer lives at the edge of a salt marsh in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

A buffet dinner is available before the lecture at 6:00 p.m. in the Swope Center located near the auditorium. Dinner tickets are $25 and must be purchased in advance at either Eight Cousins Children’s Books, Main Street, Falmouth, or at the MBL’s Communications Office in the Candle House, 127 Water Street in Woods Hole. Dinner seats are limited and tickets are only available until they sell out or until 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday, November 3. All tickets are nonrefundable. For more information contact the MBL’s Communications Office at 508-289-7423.

All Falmouth Forum lectures, performances and presentations are sponsored by the MBL Associates for the Cape Cod community and feature topics in the arts, humanities and health. They are always free and open to the public.

The series will continue throughout the fall and winter. The remaining lectures in the series are:

December 4: "Athletes—Today's Role Models Good or Bad?" - Carl Beane, "The Voice of Fenway"

January 8: Herman T. Epstein Endowed Memorial Lecture - "Starting at Standing Rock: Following Custer and Sitting Bull to the Little Big Horn" - Nathaniel Philbrick, author

January 22: "Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Two Works in Progress: Over the River, Project for the Arkansas River, Colorado; The Mastaba, Project for The United Arab Emirates" - Christo and Jeanne-Claude (the artists responsible for such memorable wrapped pieces as "The Gates" in New York's Central Park)

March 5: "The Big Dig or The Big Pig?" - Dan McNichol, award-winning author of The Big Dig and The Roads That Built America

For more information and for full lecture descriptions, visit http://www.mbl.edu/falmouthforum

The MBL is a leading international, independent, nonprofit institution dedicated to discovery and to improving the human condition through creative research and education in the biological, biomedical and environmental sciences. Founded in 1888 as the Marine Biological Laboratory, the MBL is the oldest private marine laboratory in the Americas. For more information, visit www.MBL.edu.