Celebrity Cruises announced the Godmother of the Celebrity Solstice. Atypically, she’s not a star of stage and screen; instead, she ‘stars’ in a field of enormous importance to Celebrity Cruises: the world’s oceans. Professor Sharon L. Smith, the first ocean scientist ever to serve as Godmother of a cruise ship, joined Celebrity executives today to name the brand’s sleek, 2,850-guest ship in formal ceremonies at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

A magna cum laude graduate of Colorado College, Smith earned a Ph.D. in Zoology from Duke University, holds two additional honorary doctorate degrees, and a master’s degree from the University of Auckland, where she also was a Fulbright fellow.

A biological oceanographer, Smith has traveled the world in research expeditions from Polar Regions to the Arabian Sea. She has devoted her career to studying some of the smallest components of food webs, with a particular focus on zooplankton and how their life cycles are tuned to physical forces, such as daylength in the Arctic or summer monsoons in the Arabian Sea. These tiny, twomillimeter- long animals are the biggest source of protein in the oceans, and all oceanic animals – from seabirds to small fish to whales – are ultimately dependent on them for food.

Smith investigates ecosystems by looking at how ocean physics shape the availability of the food supply, and the effects of global warming on food for birds, fish, and baleen whales, among other animals.

Smith served 15 years at the prestigious Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York, studying coastal ocean environments and the impact of nuclear energy projects. In 1993, she joined the faculty of the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science as a Professor of Marine Biology and Fisheries. Recently, she was named Dean of the Undergraduate Program in Marine Science, and also co-directs the university’s Oceans and Human Health Center.

Due in equal parts to her courage and her instincts as a scientist, Smith overcame cancer in 1993, and again in 1996. Her annual mammogram in 1993 turned up a two-millimeter cancerous lesion, about the size of a pencil point. She opted for a mastectomy, and emerged victorious over the malicious disease. And in 1996, she was diagnosed with uterine cancer. But she won that battle, too.

Smith’s story is a powerful example of the critical need for basic breast-cancer screenings – and the reason why Celebrity Solstice, in partnership with United Way on November 16, will raise $100,000 for breast cancer programs to assist lower-income women who otherwise couldn’t afford this simple measure that ultimately could save their lives.

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