Friday, August 24, 2001

WILMINGTON, NC – Agricultural runoff and urban development are concerns for North Carolina coastal fisheries but the opposite seems true for Mediterranean waters fed by the Nile River according to Dr. Scott Nixon, a Rhode Island researcher, who will lecture at 7 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 4, at UNC Wilmington’s Center for Marine Science.

In his talk “Replacing the Nile: Is Human Development Providing the Fertility Once Delivered by a Great River?” Nixon will discuss the 15-year decline of fisheries following completion of the Aswan High Dam in 1965, and the area’s recovery during the 1980s.

According to Nixon, “The fishery began a dramatic recovery during the 1980s, coincident with the increasing fertilizer use, expanded agricultural drainage, increasing human population and dramatic extensions of urban water supplies and sewage collection systems.”

Nixon, an estuarine ecologist, is professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island and a former director of Rhode Island Sea Grant. He earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Delaware and a Ph.D. in botany and ecology from UNC Chapel Hill. In 1992, he received the B.H. Ketchum Prize from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute for excellence in coastal research.

Dr. Nixon’s lecture is free and open to the public. Due to limited seating, reservations are required. Call the UNCW Center for Marine Science at 910/962-2300.