Legendary Ship Returns to USA
Brings Urgent Message to Save Coral Reefs
For Immediate Release: 09-24-03
Contact: Matthew Wetmore 310-463-5840

Join Us For Homecoming Celebrations:

* Oct. 11, 2003: RV Heraclitus (RVH) sails back under Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco Bay . 9am
* Oct. 11, 2003: RVH arrives at Jack London Square in Oakland greeted by schoolchildren, community leaders and government officials. 1pm
* Oct. 11-18, 2003: RVH will be docked at Jack London Square. Events and coral reef educational activities in greater Bay Area.

Los Angeles/Oakland - The Tall Ship RV Heraclitus, the only research vessel continually at sea monitoring coral reefs on a global basis, is returning home for the first time since it was built and launched in Oakland, California in 1975. Since departing Oakland, this ship has circumnavigated the globe, journeyed up the Amazon River, sailed to the Antarctic Peninsula, and voyaged over 200,000 sea miles (equivalent to more than 8 times around the world).

RV Heraclitus is chartered by the Planetary Coral Reef Foundation (PCRF) to study coral reefs and address the problem that the reefs, as we once knew them, are disappearing. Coral Reefs are the indicator for the health of the world's oceans and by extension, our global environment. Coral Reefs are in crisis, dying at an alarming rate worldwide. An estimated 58% of the world's coral reefs are at risk today and an estimated 10% have already disappeared. The Florida Keys suffered an estimated 38% loss of coral reefs between 1996 and 2000.

" PCRF is doing something vitally important for each and every one of us," says James Cameron, Honorary Chair of PCRF, director of the film, Titanic, and an underwater pioneer. "The health of the ocean depends on the health of coral reefs. Our destiny is interlocked with the destiny of the sea. If the seas die, we die."

To address the coral reef crisis, PCRF is pioneering a Coral Reef Satellite Mission that will monitor the world's coral reefs using satellite imagery and create the urgently needed first comprehensive baseline map of living coral reefs. To achieve this mission, PCRF has assembled an interdisciplinary team of institutions and scientists to carry out the project including: Astrium, the College of Charleston, MIT, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, SeaSpace, the Stevens Institute of Technology and USC.

In support of this mission, the international crew of scientists and students on board the RV Heraclitus has studied over 45,000 coral colonies, pioneered the process of making the first map of living coral reefs in the Southeast Asia Sea using satellite imagery, and shot over 250 hours of film to create a library of reefs worldwide. Orla Daugherty, Scientific Coordinator for field research, sent this from the ship via a laptop hooked up to a satellite phone: "We have seen reefs bombed until there is nothing left and dying because of water pollution or bleaching due to global warming. Action must be taken now to reverse the global demise of reefs and protect these underwater rainforests of the sea."

Charting its course in the way of the ancient mariners - by stars, winds and currents - the crew of the RV Heraclitus is now completing a 5,000 mile sail across the North Pacific home to deliver the message that coral reefs are in crisis all over the world. The Heraclitus crew will arrive in California for a series of scientific and educational events in Oakland, Sausalito, the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles this October and November.

Coral Reef Fact Sheet:

Called the "rainforests of the sea" coral reefs are the greatest expression of ocean life, and the most biodiverse ecosystem on Earth outside of the rainforest.
* An estimated 58% of the world's coral reefs are at risk today and an estimated 10% have already disappeared.(1)
* An estimated 88% of the reefs in Southeast Asia - the most species rich reefs on Earth - are at risk.(1)
* Threats to the world's coral reefs include: pollution, over-fishing, dynamite and cyanide fishing, sedimentation, and bleaching due to global warming.
* Lining 60,000 miles of shoreline along 109 countries, coral reefs and their habitats play a vital role in the global economy, providing resources such as fish, and services such as tourism and coastal protection worth an estimated $375 billion a year.(1)
* Unlike the rainforest, there is no comprehensive global baseline map of living coral reefs. This is urgently needed. A satellite mission dedicated to remote sensing of coral reefs can provide this critical global baseline.

(1) Please see for Reference: Reefs at Risk series, World Resources Institute.

Broadcast Quality B-Roll Video is available upon request.

Your feature and event coverage is invited! For further information, to arrange interviews or make arrangements to cover the event, please call
Matthew Wetmore at 310.463.5840.