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NEW BEDFORD WHALING MUSEUM NAMES RECIPIENTS OF 24TH ANNUAL L. BYRNE WATERMAN AWARD
Award recognizes outstanding contributions to whales and whaling-related research and pedagogy in the Arts, Humanities and Sciences

NEW BEDFORD, MA (11.10.08) - - At the 33^rd annual Whaling History Symposium, held in October at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, the 24^th L. Byrne Waterman Award was conferred upon Professors Anthony B. Dickinson and Chesley W. Sanger of the Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada.

"We think of this as a kind of Nobel Prize of whaling history," said Stuart Frank, Ph.D., Senior Curator at the Museum and Symposium organizer. "Accordingly, the award is customarily made to recognize a large body of work or for lifetime achievement, perhaps so especially in this case, as the Dickinson and Sanger partnership has been enormously productive for decades."

L. Byrne Waterman was a retired railroading executive whose interest in whaling and documentation of Chesapeake Bay watercraft earned him a national reputation. Since his death in 2006, the award has been co-presented by his son and namesake, Lyman B. Waterman, Jr. of San Diego, CA.

A biologist by trade, Dr. Dickinson had a summer job as a meat inspector at a whaling station while a graduate student in England in the 1960s. By contrast, Dr. Sanger is an Emeritus Professor of Geography whose methodologies and insights perfectly complement those of Dr. Dickinson. Both individually and collaboratively, the professors have systematically examined the history and development of whaling at such far-flung locations as Labrador, on the edge of the Canadian Arctic, and South Georgia, on the threshold of Antarctica. Their primary focus in recent years has been 20^th-century shore-station whaling, which utilized the so-called "modern" mechanized methods introduced by the Norwegians and disseminated worldwide in the early 1900s. Long after the demise of New Bedford-style hand-whaling, this technology ultimately threatened the survival of several whale species. As the result of a moratorium declared by the International Whaling Commission in 1987, the technology is currently dormant.

In addition to their prodigious contributions to journal literature, Professors Dickinson and Sanger produced the landmark books Twentieth-Century Shore-Station Whaling in Newfoundland and Labrador, published in 2005, winner of the Keith Matthews Award for Best Book published on a nautical subject; and Norwegian Whaling in Newfoundland, published in 2000.

The international Whaling History Symposium at the New Bedford Whaling Museum is the world's only annual forum for the presentation, discussion and dissemination of ongoing research about whales and whaling. Dr. Sanger and Dr. Dickinson are scheduled to speak and sign books at the 34th annual edition, on the weekend after Columbus Day Observed, in October 2009.