William Boicourt

Protection Of Coastal Waters Is Subject Of Annual WHOI Lecture

April 7, 1989
From the Falmouth Enterprise

The fifth Bostwisk H. Ketchum Lecture will be given Monday at 4 P.M. In the Woods Hole Oceanographic Instltution's Redfield Auditorlum, Water Street.

"Who Will Preserve Our Coastal Waters?" will be the topic of this year's Ketchum lecturer, Dr. William Boicourt who is is an associate professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental and Estuarine Studies, Horn Point Environmental Laboratories.

Dr. Boicourt received his B.A. Degree in Physics from Amherst College in 1966 and in 1968 he was a Summer Student Fellow at WHOI. He later earned a master's degree in 1969 and a doctorate in 1973 in Physical Oceanography from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Dr. Boicourt is author and co-author of more than 25 papers, articles and books that focus primarily on estuaries and the continental shelf. One of his primary study areas is the Chesapeake Bay.

He is an associate editor of the journal Estuaries, and has been a member of various advisory boards, including the Environmental Protection Agency's Ocean Disposal Program Review Committee and the U.S. Congress' Task Committee on Chesapeake Bay.

The Bostwick H. Ketchum Award is an endowed lectureship administered by the WHOI Coastal Research Center. The purpose of the award is to support a lecture in Woods Hole by an internationally recognized scientist or to support a longer visit by a younger researcher.

Some criteria for choosing the lecturer include an ability to produce innovative coastal research and an effectiveness in translating research results into the policy arena.

The award was established in 1983 as a tribute to the late Bostwick Ketchum who died in 1982 at the age of 70. Mr. Ketchum was a strong force in the development of biological oceanography in Woods Hole and a respected scientist at the international level. He worked at the WHOI for more than 40 years, retiring in 1977 as associate director. At the time of his death he was co-editor of a four-volume series on ocean dumping entitled Wastes in the Ocean.

Past Ketchum lecturers have included Dr. Edward Goldberg of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1984, joint recipients Michael Moore and Thomas Pearson of the United Kingdom in 1985, John Allen of Oregon State University in 1986 and Alasdair McIntyre of Scotland in 1988.