SIO - NOTES

Ben Oostdam

Drift Ice as Geologic Agent

- USGS Open File Report 93-237
19.15 minutes Produced by USGS Menlo Park
Drift Ice as Geologic Agent - USGS Open File Report 93-237:
Authors Steve Wessells, Erik Reimnitz, Peter Barnes and Ed Kempema
use time- lapse film, animations and drawings by Tau Rho Alpha to illustrate ice gouging, ice wallow, frazil and slush ice, sediment entrainment, ice rafting, turbid ice, and river flooding of fast ice. Unusual film of strudel flow and scour which leave scour holes as deep as six meters on the ocean floor.
Movie Code: UGS12

David Ross on MPA's Dave also just finished his 13th book (I am writing this on Friday Sep.13, 2002...]

Barnett on global warming
Barnett on Pacific storms

Veeh re Ice ages and sealevel

Bruno d'Anglejan, Potential Sedimentological Impacts of Hydroelectric Developments in James Bay and Hudson Bay. 21 pp., James Bay Publication Series: Hydro-Electric Development: Environmental Impacts, Service d'Information Vent du Nord, Inc./North Wind Information Services, Inc., Montréal, Québec, pp. 20-21. (1994:)

95-19 Elwany, M. Hany S., Alan B. Thum, Wendel Gayman, R. E. Flick and Saima Aijaz. Historical evaluation of San Dieguito Lagoon and inlet. Center for Coastal Studies. April 1995. 44p.

biography of Robert Dietz

Author: Inman, Douglas L.
Year: 1953
Title: Areal and seasonal variations in beach and nearshore sediments at La Jolla, California
Institution: US Dept of the Army, Corps of Engineers, Office of the Chief of Engineers, Beach Erosion Board
Report Number: Technical Memorandum No. 39 Abstract: According to Shepard & Dill, 1966, recent shelf sediments surrounding Scripps Canyon are entirely different in composition and structure from those found within the canyon head. The shelf sediments are relatively clearn, homogeneous, fine-grained quartz sand (Inman, 1953; Wimberly, 1955) whereas the canyon fill is composed of a heterogeneous mixture of interbedded layers of micaceous silty sands and matted organic debris of marine plant origin (Chamberlain, 1960; Dill, 1964).
Shepard and Dill, Submarine Canyons and other Valleys of the Sea Floor
The last time I met Bob was in the USVI, where he served as Director of Fairleigh Dickinson's St.Croix Marine Station

URI Graduate School of Oceanography News and Information Honorable Mentions John Knauss Honored by The Oceanography Society July 3, 2001--Not many people have seen Dr. John Knauss at a loss for words, but he was speechless on Saturday when presented with the current issue of the journal Oceanography, specially published by The Oceanography Society (TOS) as a tribute to his accomplishments as a scientist, an educator, an administrator, a leader, and a gentleman. Knauss, who was dean of the URI Graduate School of Oceanography (GSO) from 1962 to 1987, was unaware that TOS was going to honor him in this way. "There have been several times in the past when something has been planned for me that I have had an inkling about," said Knauss, a Saunderstown resident, "but this is not one of those times." During a short presentation ceremony at the Coastal Institute Building on the URI Narragansett Bay Campus, Richard Spinrad, editor of Oceanography and technical director for the Oceanographer of the Navy, presented Knauss with the first copy of issue 4-2 of the prestigious professional journal.

biography of H. Menard

Martin W. Johnson, Marine Biology: San Diego 1893-1984 Professor Emeritus Martin W. Johnson, professor emeritus at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, died November 28, 1984, at Snohomish, Washington, at the age of 91. He had given up his 50-year association with Scripps only a few months earlier. He worked in his laboratory until the fall of 1984.
Johnson was particularly well known as one of the three authors of the landmark text and reference, The Oceans: Their Physics, Chemistry and General Biology. He further enhanced his stature in the field with his wartime research, his postwar training of students and his collaboration with them in describing the pelagic biogeography of the Pacific.
The "Deep Scattering Layer" is probably his major wartime contribution. The U.S. Navy was using underwater sound to detect submarines. However, many properties of the ocean itself interfere with the transmission of sound. An especially serious problem was the sound reflection that appeared to be coming from mid-depths. Some thought it was in the internal circuitry of the echo sounders.
It occurred to Johnson that "...if the layer was composed of organisms, it should behave as many marine animals do, especially the plankton, and undergo diurnal migrations..." He reasoned that the layer should begin an upward ascent near sunset, after the normal work day, and migrate downward again around sunrise, before shipboard measurement had begun. He further proposed that this layer would be dense enough to scatter and reflect sound. This formed the basis for a hypothesis which Johnson formulated before a test was done, at sea, on the night of June 26-27, 1945. His predictions were confirmed and, as a result, the biological nature of the Deep Scattering Layer was established.
In 1936 the faculty at Scripps introduced a course in general oceanography in which it was "customary for those giving lectures to join the students as auditors in a following lecture given by some other faculty member." Thus the principle of the interdisciplinary nature of oceanography had early beginnings at Scripps. This established the concept that each graduate student at Scripps, no matter what his discipline, should take core courses in physical oceanography, marine chemistry, biological oceanography and marine geology.
To provide a textbook for their courses, Sverdrup, Johnson and Fleming collaborated on a book called, simply, The Oceans. It was, and still is, unique. The writing style is distinctly reserved but, nevertheless, the book has been in print and in demand for over 40 years; few authors of scientific tomes can claim that kind of record.
SIO and the science of oceanography grew rapidly after World War II, and Johnson felt that an increase in graduate student enrollment was "especially important." One of the postwar projects in which he played a significant role was the establishment of the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations and the Scripps branch of it, the Marine Life Research Group. Through the latter, Johnson managed to obtain funds for a group of graduate students to study the California Current and its plankton populations. The emphasis here was on determining which species of zooplankton were present and how their abundances varied in space and time. Only zooplankton were studied because other categories or kinds of organisms could not be reliably and quantitatively sampled at the time (1949). It was typical of him to set students to work on such fundamental research as determining the nature and life histories of the fauna.
As a result, the zooplankton fauna of the California Current became known and patterns of abundance were determined over the entire Pacific Ocean. This information was published in a series of Ph.D. theses, atlases and papers. One of the results of these studies was the determination that much of the plankton fauna of the California Current seemed to be made up of a mixture of species which had larger populations in other water masses outside of the system. The central portion of the California Current is one of the few places where many of these species co-occur. Thus the discovery of a vast amount of stirring and mixing of populations led to the speculation that much population biology and community diversity, here, was to be understood in terms of the physics of water movement, rather than alone by biological function such as food limitation, energy flow, physiological rate functions or competitive interrelationships between populations. This was such a heretical idea at the time (1954) that Johnson and his students felt more data were required before pursuing it.
As many of the species found in the California Current obviously had populations outside of it, broader-scale sampling was clearly necessary to establish the extent of the patterns of species abundance. That the major patterns were easily interpretable in terms of Sverdrup's water masses is yet another piece of the evidence of the important role of physics in regulating the biology of the ocean. This approach anticipated by over a decade the rebirth of interest in biogeography and global patterns among terrestrial biologists. The large-scale patterns and the proximal reasons for their existence developed by Johnson and his students have stood the test of time.
During formal retirement in the '70s and early '80s, Johnson returned to his interest in larval development of the many Pacific species of lobsters. His descriptions of differing sequences of development of these bizarre, leaf-life "phylosoma" stages continued to include his illustrations of exceptional quality. (He was more than illustrator: his caricatures and doodles -- often during meetings -- might have become legend had he cared to publicize them.)
Martin W. Johnson was born on September 30, 1893, in Chandler, South Dakota, in a sod-roofed farm house. Like many other young boys of Scandinavian ancestry, he worked the wheat harvests of Saskatchewan and the Dakotas. In the off-season, he rode herd and was a general ranch hand. As a boy he actually saw cowhands ride their horses through the swinging doors of local establishments. Later, when his family moved to Washington State, he worked as a logger and choker setter in the woods. After being seriously injured, he got a job as a guard on the salmon traps to protect them from fish pirates. He has written that these early experiences on the Great Plains and in the woods stimulated his interest in "fundamental ecology" and sense of wonder at the basic differences with regard to "the type of pasturage and resultant type of grazers of each." Thus the great plains, the virgin forests of the Pacific slope, and the sea strongly influenced him.
After serving in the army during WWI, he attended the University of Washington, graduating in 1923 at age 30. He was curator of the Friday Harbor biological station, served on the scientific staff of the Passamaquoddy International Fisheries Commission, published six papers and acquired a Ph.D. at the University of Washington. In 1934 T. Wayland Vaughan, Director of Scripps Institution, wrote him, offering a research associate position at $100.00 per month, saying "We have on the Institution's staff a few people who are not sea-going. I do not intend to add to the staff anybody else who will not work on water." Johnson was glad to g et the low salary "...in view of the then nation-wide depression" and the seagoing stricture was, as he said, "not a deterrent to me."
Martin Johnson was, in spite of his tough, adventurous childhood and youth, a quiet, diffident, dignified man. He did not have the gift of gab, and his lectures and seminars, for the most part, did not sparkle. Even private conversations were, at first, quite formal, even somewhat strained. But he was, in reality, quite an emotional man with a great sensitivity and awareness of the human condition and a great, intuitive feel for what were important scientific problems and which weren't. He was a good mandolin player, did fine pencil and chalk sketches, and was an excellent wood carver. It was in his carvings that he expressed the creative side of his personality not evident to the casual observer.
In spite of his basic humaneness, he did not suffer all fools gladly. There were events, situations, and individuals of which he definitely disapproved. But never did he use his position and stature to impose his views. He was completely and utterly above academic politics, at which, in any event, he would have been a failure.
An outstanding trait, all who knew "D.J." will agree, was his absolute honesty and integrity. He was, simply, incapable of deviousness or manipulation. Both he and the milieu in which he worked will be greatly missed.
John A. McGowan
Edward Brinton
Joseph L. Reid

Conclusions I consider that ZoBell made many outstanding contributions to the field of biofilm microbiology including knowledge that: - * nutrients are concentrated on surfaces. * there are more bacteria on submerged surfaces than in the seawater. * bacterial attachment to surfaces is very rapid. * microcolonies develop on surfaces. * the attachment is active rather than passive. * planktonic bacteria are not covered in 'sticky' material but sessile bacteria are and the sessiles secrete a 'cementing' substance. * the attachment tendency was influenced by the available nutrients. * it is difficult to ascertain the attachment mechanism.