By Daniel de la Calle
Barbara and Sven returned from the West Coast a few days back and this past Thursday Sven and I had a chance to go on a morning ride, discuss how Liquigas was doing in the Giro de Italia and talk about the 2010 NOAA Environmental Hero Award ceremony in La Jolla, CA.
“Thanks” to some stomach problems this spring (or so he claims) Sven is looking lean and mean and was able to talk even when the road got steep.
“It was exciting to be out there,” he said. “Obviously, it is a delight when you work hard and try to pull the best team together to make a film to in the end get this kind of recognition. We are lucky to have Barbara as a director. She is a good storyteller so the rest of us did what we were told and tried to do it well.”
From left to right, Tony Haymet, Dick Feely, Barbara Ettinger and Sven Huseby
“The evening started with a slideshow with clips from the film and Youtube pieces related to the history of the film, television shows where it had appeared and those sort of things. There was a major buffet and soon after the ceremony.
Dick Feely came down from the Seattle office of NOAA to present the award on behalf of Doctor Jane Lubchenko, the Administrative Director of NOAA. She is a woman with deep knowledge of ocean acidification as a result of her work at Oregon State University,” said Sven.
“After the award ceremony we had a screening of the full 83 minute version of the documentary for the 250 attendees and finally a q&a with Barbara and myself, Andrew Dickson, Tony Haymet and Victoria Fabry.”
I did not recognize a couple of the names, so Sven, water bottle in his hand, explained: “Tony Haymet is the president of Scripps. Andrew Dickson is known as the man who came up with a standardized way of calibrating instruments to measure pH levels around the world seas, whether it is Japan, Norway, Australia or the United States. And Victoria Fabry, or Vicky Fabry as we know her, is the scientist who was originally interviewed by Elizabeth Kolbert in her seminal article for the November 2006 issue of the New Yorker titled “The Darkening Sea”. It is always a treat to catch up with Vicky.”
“The best part of getting an award like this is you can leverage it into more publicity and greater milage for the film,” he concluded.
