UWA Institute of Advanced Studies, UWA Oceans Institute, the City of Perth Library & Boffins Books are pleased to present Charlie Veron on The Life Underwater.
A Life Underwater is the extraordinary memoir of this maverick marine biologist who transformed our understanding of coral reefs. Charlie Veron is the world expert on reefs, and has added a major new dimension to the theory of evolution and named one fifth of the world's coral.
This presentation will be chaired by Professor Gary Kendrick, UWA Oceans Institute.
Copies of A Life Underwater will be available for sale on the night.
Can't make it? We'll happily have a copy of Charlie Veron's A Life Underwater signed for you. Simply contact us via phone, email, online or visit us in-store, and we'll take care of the rest.
Hailed by David Attenborough and proclaimed a second Charles Darwin, Charlie Veron has lived up to his namesake. Even as a toddler, he had a deep affinity with the natural world, and by school age he knew more about some sciences than his teachers did.
This didn't prevent him failing in a system that smothered creativity, and it was only by chance that he went to university. And only by chance that he became a marine biologist, through his love of scuba diving. But once he found his specialty he revolutionised it. He generated a new concept of evolution that incorporates environmental change and a radical idea of what species are, matters which lie at the heart of conservation. He has identified more coral species than anyone in history, and in the process become known as the Godfather of Coral. Charlie has dived most of the world's coral reefs, revelling in a beauty that few others have seen. In this engaging memoir he explains what reefs say about our planet's past and future, and why it's critical they be protected. And also why it's critical that scholarly independence be safeguarded.
For it was the freedom he had as a young scientist, to be wayward, to take risks - a freedom barely imaginable in today's world of managed academia - that allowed his breakthroughs. Exhilaratingly eye-opening, provocative, funny and warm, A Life Underwater is an inspiration to the young and the young at heart.
Charlie Veron was born in Sydney and now lives near Townsville. He has three higher degrees in different fields of science and was the first full-time researcher on the Great Barrier Reef. He was the first scientist to be employed by the Australian Institute of Marine Science, becoming Chief Scientist of that organisation in 1997. He has published a hundred pieces on all aspects of corals, from palaeontology, taxonomy and biogeography to physiology and molecular science, and has also published widely on other subjects, notably evolution and mass extinctions. He has also established a major website at coralsoftheworld.org. His many awards include the Darwin Medal, the Australian Marine Sciences Association Jubilee Pin, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Academy of Underwater Science. His work has underpinned most major reef conservation initiatives over the past two decades, inside the Coral Triangle and beyond. Charlie has been diving since the age of eighteen, logging six thousand hours underwater, and has participated in sixty-seven expeditions to most of the world’s key reef regions.
