Dr. Sherri “Sam” Mason (left) and Helen Domske (right)

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Buffalo, NY, March 22, 2018 - WRFA public affairs director Jason Sample talks with New York Sea Grant's Coastal Education Specialist and Associate Director of the Great Lakes Program at the University at Buffalo Helen Domske and Fredonia State's Dr. Sherri “Sam” Mason.

Both Dr. Mason and Demske will deliver “Water Politics: Saving the Great Lakes, the Largest Fresh Water Ecosystem on the Planet,” a presentation on the health of the Great Lakes. The discussion, part of the GreenUp Jamestown Initiative at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Jamestown, NY, is slated to begin at 7 pm on Wednesday, March 28, 2018.

Going from regional to local in scope, the evening will start with Sam presenting on a recent State of the Great Lakes report. Helen will then present an overview of NY Sea Grant and the numerous projects they have supported. Sam, a current recipient of NY Sea Grant support, will close out by discussing her work, past and present. The panel will end with an open discussion with the audience.

Fredonia State professor and researcher Dr. Sherri Mason (inset photo) speaking to the Chautauqua County Legislature prior to its vote on a local law banning microbeads in September 2015. Photos courtesy of Paul C. Focazio/NYSG; WRFA Radio (inset).

One recent NYSG-funded project, which began funding for in early 2016, has a research team led by Mason determining degradation rates within three different freshwater environments (shoreline, open-water, and estuary) utilizing laboratory-scale environmental chambers and focusing upon those plastics found to be most prominent in Great Lakes Plastic Pollution open-water surveys. The research team is assessing ecosystem impacts by conducting in-lab feeding studies using zooplankton and algae to determine growth and survival rates of microorganisms both with and without microplastics incorporated into feed. Project results will fill a gap in scientific knowledge about the impacts of microplastics within freshwater habitats.

NYSG has funded Mason on projects related to marine debris and microplastics. For more on the topic, see www.nyseagrant.org/microplastics.

More Info: New York Sea Grant

New York Sea Grant (NYSG), a cooperative program of Cornell University and the State University of New York (SUNY), is one of 33 university-based programs under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Sea Grant College Program.

Since 1971, NYSG has represented a statewide network of integrated research, education and extension services promoting coastal community economic vitality, environmental sustainability and citizen awareness and understanding about the State’s marine and Great Lakes resources.

Through NYSG’s efforts, the combined talents of university scientists and extension specialists help develop and transfer science-based information to many coastal user groups—businesses and industries, federal, state and local government decision-makers and agency managers, educators, the media and the interested public.

The program maintains Great Lakes offices at Cornell University, SUNY Buffalo, SUNY Oswego and the Wayne County Cooperative Extension office in Newark. In the State's marine waters, NYSG has offices at Stony Brook University in Long Island, Brooklyn College and Cornell Cooperative Extension in NYC and Kingston in the Hudson Valley.

For updates on Sea Grant activities: www.nyseagrant.org has RSS, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube links. NYSG produces a monthly e-newsletter, "NOAA Sea Grant's Social Media Review," via its blog, www.nyseagrant.org/blog. Our program also offers a free e-list sign up via www.nyseagrant.org/nycoastlines for its flagship publication, NY Coastlines/Currents, which is published quarterly.