Symposium honors SEALAB’s 50th anniversary, Florida Ocean Week
In honor of SEALAB’s 50th anniversary and Florida’s Ocean Week, FSU Panama City will present “SEALAB Spirit of Exploration” at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, July 24, at the Holley Lecture Hall. Speakers will include SEALAB Chief Quartermaster Robert “Bob” Barth, journalist and author Ben Hellwarth and director of Naval Research Ocean Battlespace Sensing Department Dr. Frank Herr. The public is invited to this free event. For more information, call 770-2154 or visit pc.fsu.edu.
SPEAKERS BIOS
Bob Barth: Chief Quartermaster
Bob Barth was the only aquanaut to participate in all of the Navy Experimental diving programs, Genesis and SEALABs 1, 2 and 3. Barth resides in Panama City, where he oversees Navy Experimental Diving Unit (NEDU).
Frank L. Herr, Jr., Ph.D.: Director of Naval Research Ocean Battlespace Sensing Department
Dr. Frank Herr has been head of the Office of Naval Research Ocean Battlespace Sensing Department since 2005. He is the U.S. National Representative for the Maritime Systems Group of The
Technical Cooperation Program (TTCP) coordinating technology among U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. He also represents the U.S. in the NATO Maritime Science and Technology Committee advising the NATO Center for Maritime Research and Experimentation in La Spezia, Italy.
Ben Hellwarth: Journalist and Author
Ben Hellwarth interviewed many surviving SEALAB participants and uncovered lost documents and records to write the first comprehensive account of the manned undersea operation. He worked for several California newspapers and won a number of notable awards as a staff writer in the 1990s for the Santa Barbara News-Press, where he got the seed of the idea for his well-received first book, “SEALAB: America’s Forgotten Quest to Live and Work on the Ocean Floor” (Simon & Schuster, 2012).