When science collides with the ocean, all kinds of things can happen. Many of them are great for the environment, some are personally life-changing and a few will get your adrenaline pumping. To inspire the next generation of marine science whiz kids, we’ve collected a few tales from the sea. Each experience is a real event related by someone who has dedicated their life to making the ocean a better place.
Growing up on the coast of Southern California, I spent a lot of time on or in the water—fishing, body surfing and diving. Not wanting to leave the coast (and my favorite pastimes), I headed off to the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), as an undergraduate. Like many of my classmates, I majored in biology and had aspirations of going on to medical school. So, during the spring of my junior year, I applied to several of the University of California medical schools. At the same time, I was also looking for a summer job. Inasmuch as my ‘62 Volkswagen Beetle had just died, I was 20 | www.GuyHarveyMagazine.com
restricted to potential employers that were within bicycling distance of downtown La Jolla. I got lucky. I had inquired about summer employment in a few labs at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, but there weren’t any positions available. Then, it just so happened that a fisheries biologist at the National Marine Fisheries Service’s (NMFS) lab in La Jolla called one of those labs to see if they knew of an undergraduate who would be willing to work on a project. The study involved the analysis of underwater photographs taken by a free-vehicle “drop” camera. The camera was deployed off a moving research vessel over “acoustic targets” (fish schools) that were detected by sonar. The camera would slowly descend through the water column, taking a total of 36 photos, before releasing its ballast
