-
Date
November 12, 2012
- Time 8:00 p.m.
- Location Toronto, ON
- Price Series tickets start at $79.
Photograph by Wes Skiles
Kenny Broad
Photograph by Max Wallace“You can’t use a remotely operated vehicle to explore underwater caves because the technology simply doesn’t exist. It’s one of the few environments left on the planet where you must physically go to understand its workings.” —Kenny Broad
Kenny Broad, National Geographic’s Explorer of the Year for 2011, is also an accomplished cave explorer. He pursues this extreme and dangerous occupation not for sport but to gain valuable insights into the freshwater world beneath our feet. Named a “freshwater hero” by National Geographic’s Freshwater Initiative, Broad uses his research to study climate change and groundwater pollution to help better manage freshwater resources.
Largely unexplored, unimaginably beautiful, and considered among the most hazardous places to dive, the flooded caves, or “blue holes,” of the Bahamas are a potential treasure trove of scientific knowledge. Broad leads scientific expeditions to these dangerous but fascinating environments, making discoveries with implications for fields as diverse as microbiology, archaeology, and even astrophysics.
“Underwater caves may just look like dark, eerie holes, but they can be critical reservoirs of clean, fresh drinking water and are integral to the health of the surrounding habitats,” says Broad. “Exploring these caves, the inner-space where the the highly vulnerable freshwater and marine environments meet beneath our feet, allows me to combine my intellectual interests with my need for adventure; hopefully, in the process, helping to reduce the negative impacts on our natural resources.” A witty and entertaining speaker and committed scientist, Broad will share the adventure and science of exploring this incredible underwater world, as seen in the August 2010 issue of National Geographic.
View our Tickets and Information page.
Return to the Toronto Speaker Series main page.
Watch a trailer for the Nat Geo/NOVA special about the Blue Holes expedition:
60 Simcoe Street
Toronto, ON, Canada
M5J 2H5
Telephone: 416-872-4255
Lat/Lon: 43.646709399999999, -79.385899800000004
National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Robert Ballard has led more than one hundred undersea expeditions, from hydrothermal vents in the Galápagos Rift, to the most legendary of all shipwrecks, the Titanic. Voyage with him to a realm less well known than the surface of the moon—our planet’s oceans.
Catherine Karnow is celebrated for her vibrant, emotional, and sensitive photographs of people and cultures. She has covered Vietnam since first traveling there in 1990. Join her for new insights into a country that is looking again to the future, after years of war and repression.
Join photographer Tim Laman and ornithologist Ed Scholes as they recount their wild and hairy adventures in the New Guinea rain forest in search of some of nature’s most extraordinary wonders—the birds of paradise.
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