December 2002: Vol. 82, No. 1December 2002: Vol. 82, No. 1
n June 17, UGA ecologist Jim Porter and marine sciences doctoral student Katie Patterson released the conclusions of their six-year coral study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
News of their discoveries, based on data compiled in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, was translated into 15 languages and the search engine tracking how many newspapers picked up the story shut down after 1,500 citations.
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 Porter is a veteran undersea explorer, but his only diving certificate is the 10-foot license he got as a freshman at Yale. |
The most dominant form of coral in the sea, the elkhorn—which is found on America's only extensive coral reef—is withering away from disease faster than scientists like Porter would have previously thought possible. That news becomes all the more sobering, given that the source of the epidemic may be human beings.
To help GM readers appreciate the severity of the problem, we sent assistant editor Alex Crevar (AB '93) into the drink with Porter & Co. Descending to the Sand Key coral reef in full SCUBA gear, Alex got a first-hand look at what Eugene Odum (see tribute) would have seen as a serious disconnect in mankind's symbiotic relationship with nature. As grim as parts of Alex's story are, it's admirable that UGA scientists were the ones to blow the whistle. Thank God, someone did.
"Class I research universities like UGA are the places where new knowledge is created," says Porter, whose doctoral advisees—like Katie Patterson, who co-authored the elkhorn research paper—are afforded the scientific opportunity of a lifetime when they sign on with him.
We gave Alex a few hours to towel off, and then—before he'd even written the cover story on Porter—sent him off to Washington, D.C., for a two-part interview with Chadwick "Corntassel" Smith (BSEd '73), who is principal chief of the Cherokee Nation.
Alex shadowed the chief while he negotiated land-reform bills with members of the 107th Congress, then followed Smith home to the Cherokee reservation in Tahlequah, Okla., where they ended up after their torturous Trail of Tears march from Georgia and Tennessee in 1838-39. There, Alex and photographer Carly Calhoun (ABJ '02, AB '02) got to see a modern-day Indian chief in the act of governing America's second-largest tribe. This piece is another in our ongoing "The sun never sets on the Bulldog Nation" series, and it should help GM readers appreciate one alumnus' struggle to preserve his ethnic heritage and native culture.
