DURHAM, N.C. – Patrick Halpin, Gabel Associate Professor of the Practice of Marine Geospatial Ecology, will be an invited speaker this summer at the World Wildlife Fund’s 2008 Kathryn Fuller Science for Nature Seminar Series.

Halpin’s July 10 talk at the WWF headquarters in Washington, D.C., will be on “Protecting the Large Pelagics: New Technologies for Marine Conservation in the Open Ocean.”

“Ship strikes, entanglements, fisheries by-catch and sonar interactions are among growing threats facing critical pelagic species today. These threats are spread over wide areas of our oceans and often occur outside of the jurisdiction of established marine protected areas and territorial waters,” he says. “Future efforts to keep marine mammals, sea turtles, seabirds and other large migratory marine species out of harm’s way will necessarily involve a conservation strategy that incorporates greater use of more predictive forecasting, near real-time monitoring and dynamic management.

“In my WWF presentation, I will provide examples of marine information systems, forecasting models and new technological applications being developed to address pelagic species protection, and address new directions in marine conservation,” he says.

Halpin leads the Nicholas School’s Marine Geospatial Ecology Laboratory and is a founding faculty member of the Duke Center for Marine Conservation.

The Science for Nature Seminar Series is a bimonthly series of talks that brings leading scientists from a variety of fields to Washington, D.C., to present new research advancements of central importance to international conservation.  Now in its second year, the series has become a popular forum and networking opportunity for the conservation community. Hundreds of scientists, conservation practitioners, policymakers and representatives from government and environmental NGOs attend the seminars.  The series is named in honor of Kathryn Fuller, former president and CEO of WWF.

Last year’s inaugural Science for Nature series featured seminars by some of the biggest names in environmental science and conservation, including marine scientists Barbara Block and Jeremy Jackson, evolutionary ecologist Dan Janzen, tropical ecologist Lisa Curran, and two conservation pioneers from the Nicholas School: Stuart Pimm and John Terborgh. Pimm is Doris Duke Professor of Conservation Ecology and is one of the world’s most widely cited experts on biodiversity and species extinctions. Terborgh is director of the Center for Tropical Conservation at Duke and is one of two Nicholas School researchers who are members of the National Academy of Sciences. 

In addition to providing three invited speakers in the first two years of the Kathryn Fuller Science for Nature Seminar Series, the Nicholas School has another close tie to WWF programs named in Fuller’s honor: Eric Treml, one of Halpin’s former doctoral students and post-docs, is now a WWF Kathryn Fuller Postdoctoral Fellow.

To learn more about Halpin’s talk, go to.

To learn more about Halpin and his research, visit the Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab Web site at