Giuseppe Cortese

He was born in Reggio Calabria, a Greek colony founded in 600 BC at the very tip of Italy’s boot, just opposite Sicily: only 3 km away, quite practical if you can walk on water. After a lot of close brushes with Mesozoic rocks during his University years, He specialized in modern radiolarians, the plankton group that controlled the silica cycle in the ocean for a long time, until diatoms stole their show… I’ve worked on fjords, the Nordic Seas and their oceanography, morphometry of microfossils, temperature and sea ice reconstructions, silica cycle, polar paleoclimate, iron fertilization and all things Southern Ocean. Hemoved to New Zealand in January 2009, where he keep on studying the Southern Ocean, the SW Pacific and the Tasman Sea, particularly their recent past climate history. As fitting for his Greek heritage and geological background, He married his own rock (Meera) on a caldera rim, in Santorini. He have way too many hobbies to cleanse his brain, including riding motorbikes, cooking, playing keyboards, fishing/boating, travelling and experiencing the world, learning languages, and gaming.