NARRAGANSETT, R.I. — October 31, 2006 — Larry Mayer, professor and director of the Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping at the University of New Hampshire, will present the Charles and Marie Fish Lecture in Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island on Friday, Nov. 3 at 1 p.m.

The free public lecture, entitled “Mapping the Unseen Ocean: New Approaches to Mapping and Visualizing the Seafloor,” will be held in the Coastal Institute auditorium on URI’s Narragansett Bay Campus.

Mayer’s lecture will explore how a revolution in mapping technology and visualization techniques has provided new perspectives of deep sea processes, shipwrecks and the behavior of organisms in the oceans.

A participant in more than 60 oceanography research expeditions, Mayer was a member of the President’s Panel on Ocean Exploration and co-chair of the NOAA Ocean Exploration Advisory Working Group. His research deals with sonar imaging and remote characterization of the seafloor, as well as advanced applications of 3-D visualization to ocean mapping problems. A 1973 graduate of URI, he earned a Ph.D. from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

The annual Charles and Marie Fish Lecture is supported by income from the Charlie and Bobbie Fish Endowment for Oceanography. The Fish’s established URI’s first marine biological program in 1935, as well as a graduate program in oceanography at the Narragansett Marine Laboratory, which later became the Graduate School of Oceanography.

For more information about the lecture, call the URI Office of Marine Programs at 401-874-6211 or visit www.omp.gso.uri.edu.