SIO Log

September 22 - September 29, 2000 vol. 37 no. 38

In Memoriam

We are very sad to report the death of ocean engineer, diver, and ocean
adventurer Willard N. Bascom at his La Jolla home on September 20. He was
born in New York City in 1916. A maverick innovator, he became a prominent
ocean engineer. He began work in his teens as a "mucker" on the Delaware
Aqueduct tunnel during the Great Depression. He then studied mining at the
Colorado School of Mines. His career in ocean science began in 1945 when he
joined John Isaacs for studies of waves and beaches first at Berkeley and
later at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He lived in Monterey after
the war and his friends included John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts. He was a
member of Isaacs' scientific party during the 1946 Bikini Atoll atomic bomb
test. Bascom pioneered the use of SCUBA for scientific diving on SIO's
Capricorn Expedition. In 1954, he joined the staff at NSF where he
organized the first phase of Project Mohole. He was president of Ocean
Science and Engineering, Inc. and Director of the Southern California
Coastal Water Research Project. Passionate about art as well as science,
he studied poetry, music, painting, cinematography, and underwater
archeology. The author of several books, his final monograph on the salvage
of the sunken treasure of the Civil War-era sidewheeler Brother Jonathan is
in press. Handsome, boyish and active to the end of his life, he is
survived by his daughter Anitra Worth, brother Robert, grandchildren, and
his great friend Suzanne Hagar. (Deborah Day and Joe Hlebica)

Calendar

Friday, September 22

MARINE BIOLOGY SEMINAR - Rudi Strickler, Univ. of Wisconsin, Milwaukee,
will present "Copepods and their Physiques/Physics: Scaling from Nano to
Tera" in 4500 Hubbs Hall at 12 noon. (Brian Palenik, x47505)

DOCTORAL DISSERTATION DEFENSE - Jeffrey Drazen will defend his doctoral
dissertation entitled, "The Feeding Ecology of Pacific Macrourids" in 4500
Hubbs Hall at 2:00 p.m. The public is invited (Tanya Levi, tlevi@ucsd.edu)

Wednesday, September 27

ECOLOGY LUNCHEON SEMINAR - Ted Case, UCSD Biology Department, Section of
Ecology, Behavior and Evolution, will present "The Evolution of Species
Borders" in 4500 Hubbs Hall at 12:15 p.m. (Bonnie Becker,
bjbecker@ucsd.edu)

PORD SEMINAR - Dr. Armin Kñhl, SIO, will present "An Adjoint Method for the
Assimilation of Statistical Moments into Eddy Resolving Ocean Models" at
3:30 p.m. in Nierenberg Hall 101. (Arne Biastoch,
abiastoch@ucsd.edu)

*******************************

Thursday, September 28

NIERENBERG MEMORIAL - Please join us in celebrating the life of our former
director, Bill Nierenberg. There will be a memorial service under the
trees at the Martin Johnson House, beginning at 3 p.m. There will be
several brief anecdotal talks, followed by a reception, and musical
entertainment. At 2:30 PM, while you are walking up the hill, look to
the water and check out the fly-by plane! (We are expecting a lot of
off-campus guests, so please bear with us regarding parking......thanks!)
(Jill Ives, x43948)

*******************************

Friday, September 29

MARINE BIOLOGY SEMINAR - Sarka Southern, SW Fisheries Science Center, will
present "Molecular Analysis of Stress Response in Dolphins and Whales: New
Techniques for Monitoring Environmental Stress" in 4500 Hubbs Hall at 12
noon. (Brian Palenik, x47505)

DOCTORAL DISSERTATION DEFENSE - Jana Davis will defend her doctoral
dissertation entitled "Temporal and Spatial Dynamics of a Tidepool Fish
Assemblage in San Diego, California" in 4500 Hubbs Hall at 2:00 p.m.
The public is invited (Tanya Levi, tlevi@ucsd.edu)

GEOPHYSICS SEMINAR - Toshiro Tanimoto, UC Santa Barbara, will present
"Gravitational Energy Change by Earthquakes" in IGPP Munk Lab Conference
Room at 3 p.m., refreshments at 2:45 p.m. (Bridget Smith,
bsmith@mahi.ucsd.edu

Notices

LECTURE AND BOOK SIGNING -- Join Christopher Wills, a professor of biology
at UCSD, and Jeffrey Bada, a professor of marine chemistry at Scripps, on
Oct. 1 as they discuss the engaging issues brought to light in their new
book, "The Spark of Life: Darwin and the Primeval Soup." The lecture and
book signing event begins at 2 p.m. How did life originate on Earth? What
did the earliest primitive organisms look like? Were they based on RNA,
DNA, or on something we would hardly recognize today? Is there life
elsewhere in the universe? During the lively presentation and discussion on
the origin of life, Wills and Bada will describe the steps by which living
organisms first appeared, and show how, right from the beginning, the
forces of evolution were at work. The lecture includes demonstrations of
origin-of-life experiments. (Mario Aguilera, x43626)

OCEAN POLICY SEMINAR - Christopher Stone, USC Law School, will present "A
Five Step Plan to Preserve the Oceans" in the IGPP Revelle Conference Room
on October 5, 2000, from 1-2p.m. Stone will survey five related measures
he has been advocating--restriction of subsidies; stabilization of high
seas regimes (though trade measures); imposition of user fees; creation of
an ocean trust fund; and creation of an ocean guardian. He is the author of
several books and many articles including Should Trees Have Standing? and
other Essays on Law, Morals and the Environment (Oceana Publications,
1996); The Gnat is Older than Man: Global Environment and Human Agenda,
(Princeton U. Press, 1993); (paperback 1995); and Earth and Other Ethics,
Harper & Row, New York (1987); (paperback, 1988).

CHECK OUT OUR TROPHY - Hey, there is a totally rad surfboard on display in
the Galleria of the Birch Aquarium at Scripps! It is the perpetual trophy
awarded to the winning surf team at the UCSD Cancer Center Luau and
Longboard Invitational fund raiser. And, this year, SIO WON! This annual
event has become a pretty serious contest between 21 teams made up of men &
women in the San Diego business/medical/media/politics worlds. This year
the winners were none other than OUR team from SIO---Sam Iacobellis, David
Sandwell, John Colosi, Carsten Kooyman, and Jerry Kooyman, along with
Legend Peter Townend!!!!!! So.......WE get the trophy for the whole entire
year!!!!!! Cowabunga! The board was shaped by Donald Takayama of
Oceanside. He is one of the foremost shapers in the world and has shaped
boards for many top legends and pro surfers. The board is 9'6" and is made
of redwood and balsa. It is a replica of the classic surfboards used in
the 40s and 50s before the introduction of foam. Cool, huh? (Jill Ives,
x43948)

VEE VONT YOUR BLOOD - The Bloodmobile will be at SIO in the Marine
Biology Service Yard on Wednesday, October 4, from 9:00 a.m. -1:00 p.m.
Please call Lynn for an appointment, x42380. Everyone who donates blood
will receive a free T-shirt. Walk-Ins are welcomed, but appointments will
be taken first. Bring picture I.D. and eat something before donating.
(Lynn Canella, x42830)

SIXTY YEARS AT SCRIPPS?!? Yep, you heard it right! Chuck Colgan (25),
Jill Ives (20), and Cindy Clark (15) invite you to their Survival
Celebration TG, at Surfside, Friday, October 6.........sixty down, sixty to
go! (Jill Ives, x43948)

Ship News

R/V New Horizon - Weekly Scientific Report - 09/18/00: Completed NavOceano
CENCAL survey. Observations included 173 CTD casts, eight sediment cores
from Sur Ridge, and 77 XBT drops. A final 25-hour time series was
collected in Monterey Bay. CalCOFI line 67 was occupied from station 55 to
115. Observations along line 67 also included vertical and horizontal
plankton tows, nutrient measurements, and laboratory measurements of
chlorophyll and productivity. Line 67 measurements show the core of the
California Current between 124W and 126W with near surface salinity < 33.
High productivity was confined to Monterey Bay. Dense surface populations
of salps and doliolids were observed to the west of the California Current
core, despite the low productivities that were measured there. (Dr. Curt
Collins / NPS)

R/V Roger Revelle, Weekly Scientific Report, 21 September 2000: We have
just finished the third week of the HOME SeaSoar/Doppler sonar survey. The
beginning of the week saw the completion of our survey of the Kauai
Channel. Internal waves of 100 m amplitude were common, especially on the
south side of the ridge. Energetic activity extended to at least 60 km
away from the ridge. A section starting in the central Kauai Channel and
extending across the ridge was repeated five times during the spring tide;
these data will allow some insight into temporal variability. Shear
variances on a roughly 10-m scale were quite large, with the ratio of
shear-squared to buoyancy frequency-squared equal to 0.3-0.5. For
comparison, shear variances were about a factor of five smaller in the open
Pacific halfway between here and the west coast of the US. We are now
surveying northwestward along the ridge in a broad zig-zag pattern. We
plan to recover SeaSoar on Friday to begin recovering the microstructure
floats (LAMPs) deployed earlier.

Reporting from R/P FLIP 20 SEP 1330 UTC: FLIP is currently operating
approximately 100 nm off shore from Monterey in a multi-institutional
experiment dubbed FAIRS (Fluxes, Air-Sea Interation,and Remote Sensing).
The work is sponsored by three programs at ONR: Remote Sensing, Marine
Meteorology, and Physical Oceanography. The institutions participating are
the Applied Physics Laboratory at the University of Washington, Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution, the Institute of Ocean Sciences, the Naval
Research Laboratory, and the University of Massachusetts. We have 10
scientists about 5 tons of equipment onboard. FLIP departed San Diego
Friday 15 Sep and travelled approximately 400 nm to arrive at the
experiment site for a sunset 'flip' on Sunday 17 Sep. Set-up is proceeding
well with a target of full deployment for Thurdsay 21 Sep. FLIP will
return to San Diego on or about 15 Oct. (Andy Jessup, APL UW)

CHEERS!