Dr. Sayed El-Sayed 7 May Brian Shoemaker Interviewer. BS: This is an oral interview with Dr. Sayed El-Sayed, conducted as part of the Polar

Transcription

1 Dr. Sayed El-Sayed 7 May 2002 Brian Shoemaker Interviewer (Begin Tape 1 - Side A) (000) BS: This is an oral interview with Dr. Sayed El-Sayed, conducted as part of the Polar Oral History Project of the American Polar Society and Byrd Polar Research Center of The Ohio State University on a grant from the National Science Foundation. The interview was taken at Dr. El-Sayed's home in Langley, Washington, by Brian Shoemaker on the 7th of May, Dr. El-Sayed, this is your interview. People come to the polar regions with something in them, education, training, skills, desire, whatever it is, and whatever it was that you brought. I'd like to back it up to see how you got it, more or less. Where did you grow up? El-S: I was born and raised in Alexandria, Egypt, right on the beautiful coast of the Mediterranean and I went to school there. I finished my primary and secondary school and then I went to the University of Alexandria and received my Bachelor's Degree of Science in And since I have been living on the Mediterranean, I have a tremendous love for the sea and so at that time, the Department of Oceanography was recently established at the university, so I enrolled there and was very, very lucky to have two

2 2 eminent professors of oceanography. The two or them were Dr. [Hussein Fausi], who became the Dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of Alexandria and later on, actually, became the Minister of Culture. He was a very, very cultured man in music, literature and everything. And through him, actually, I was really infatuated with a love of the sea. He really had a tremendous impact on me, not only as far as oceanography was concerned, but also as far as western music. And the other is Professor [Abdel Fatah Mohammed]. Later on, also, he became the Dean of the Faculty of Science and he also spent a year at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. This is how the first time that I heard about that institution there as a Fulbright Scholar. And so, when I finished my Master's Degree in Oceanography in 1951, I saw an ad in the paper from the Fulbright Commission in Egypt and I was very lucky. I was selected as one of the 22 among something like maybe three or four thousand that applied at the time from Egypt. BS: They selected 22? El-S: And I was one of the lucky ones. And, of course, so when they asked me where I wanted to go and I said, well surely, actually, the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. So, I came to this country on a Fulbright Fellowship and before I went to Scripps, it was at that time recommended or part of the agreement actually that I had to spend about six weeks at the University of Washington for what they called an orientation period. This is how I first made contact with the University of Washington. BS: Dr. Johnson here then? El-S: Well, no, that was Fleming. BS: Dr. Fleming is here, yes.

3 3 El-S: And I went to the college officially to meet what later on became my mentor, Dr. Richard Van Cleef. He was, at that time, it was not a college officially, it was a school officially. And he introduced me to another giant in oceanography, Richard Fleming. And after I finished my orientation period, I went to Scripps Institution of Oceanography where I got to know some of the real giant names in oceanography - [Haupt, Rex, Ravel and Shepard and Claude dubear, Walter Monk] and all the good people there - I was just so very fortunate, actually, at that time. And then at the end of the year, I had to go to Egypt, but had an opportunity to study in this country when I wrote to Richard Van Cleef. I had had a short visit with him at the University of Washington during my orientation period and I asked him, actually, if he would have some sort of a fellowship or a scholarship for me and luckily for me, he said that yes, he did. (50) And so I came to the University of Washington, and that was back in 1953, and I worked with him on a project that was supported by the State of Washington, and the project was population dynamics of marine fisheries in the Pacific Northwest, and particularly in the Puget Sound. When I finished in June, 1959, I applied for a job and, again, I was very fortunate to have another big name in oceanography, [Peter Ray], who hired me to work with him as one of his assistants in a Gulf outlet project. At the time, the Army Corps of Engineers was drilling where there is a canal between the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi River and at that time they were afraid that the salt intrusion might create some sort of a problem for the fisheries, particularly for the shrimp fishermen there. So, I was hired on that project and that started my association with Texas A&M.

4 4 BS: Was this before you got your degree? El-S: No, this was after I got my degree. I got my Ph.D. in 1959, at the University of Washington. And my dissertation was very much similar to the area where I live right now, in the Saratoga passage and the Holmes Harbor and Spring Cove, so I'm very familiar with this area there. It's a little like new at that time when I was a young scientist there. Maybe 40 years later, I will be coming back to the same area where I used to do a lot of fish tagging and so on and so forth. BS: Did you meet Ann, your wife, here? El-S: Well, I met her, yes, and we were married in 1961, in Seattle. BS: Are you a Muslim? El-S: I am Muslim, yes. BS: Is she a Muslim now? El-S: I still am. BS: No, is she? El-S: No, she is not, no, no, no. She is irreligious, if you want to call her. BS: She is passive. Did you get married in a mosque?

5 5 El-S: No, I was married in a Unitarian Fellowship, a Unitarian Church. BS: That's interesting. El-S: Well, actually at that time and still is, I felt Unitarians are the closest to the Muslims as far as their beliefs are concerned, because they don't really believe in the trinity or all the sort of things. They are much more liberal and they take a lot of people there - what you call the drifters. You find a lot of Catholics and former Catholics and maybe Jews and Muslims. BS: In the United States, we switch religions around. My wife is a Seventh Day Adventist, so I went to the Seventh Day Adventist Church. It didn't matter to me. The Navy had non-denominational services... OK, go on again. El-S: OK, so we were talking about my job at Texas A&M, exactly how I started my relation with Texas A&M. That was the second of November, 1959, when I went to Texas A&M as the assistant to Peter Ray. Then, he left for Alaska and became the Director of the Marine Station in Juneau, Alaska, if I'm not mistaken. And at that time I saw there was a vacancy right in the middle of the semester and so the only one there to fill in the gap was El-Sayed. So, I was asked to step in and try to finish the semester until they find a replacement for Peter Ray. Well, I did apply for the job and fortunately I was lucky to get it. BS: What year was that? (100)

6 6 El-S: That was back in 1961, so I was on the faculty back in 1961, at Texas A&M. And just to condense it now, I retired from the faculty in 1997, I think, and I'm now a professor emeritus at Texas A&M. I still have my office, and have a research project not in the Antarctic, but somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean and in the Middle East. It's a cooperative program between the US, the Egyptians and the Israelis, and this program is still going on since 1980, so it's now in the 22nd year of that program there. It's called Cooperative Marine Research Program in the Middle East. It is supported and funded by the USAID - the United States Agency for International Development. We'll talk about that later on. How did I get involved in the Antarctic? This is what I always referred to as everything actually is fate - Kismet, you know. I never thought in my life that here I was born and raised in Alexandria, Egypt, came to this country on a Fulbright Fellowship, got a job in Texas and what business do I have to go to the Antarctic? Until one day, during the lunch break, I was walking to my car. At that time it was in the early '60s. We used to drive home for lunch since it was close by. And I met Captain Luis Capurro. He was the Capitan di Naveo in the Argentine Navy and at that time, he was the Director of the Oceanographic Data Center. There are two Centers at that time, actually. One in Washington, DC, one in College Station, Texas, and the other one was in Moscow. And he told me that he had just received a grant from the National Science Foundation to do work to study the circumpolar currents, and particularly the Drake Passage. BS: What was his name? El-S: Luis Capurro. Luis R. Capurro. And so, he asked me if I would be interested to do work with the Argentines on the Drake Passage. I said, "Who the hell is the Drake Passage?" And he said, "Sayed, actually, you are sharp, you should know that it's that passage between Capo Horno and Tierra del Fuego and the Antarctic peninsula." I said,

7 7 "Oh yes, ok. But, I thought that was called the Magellan Straits." He said, "No, we call it the Drake Passage." So, I told him, "What do you want me to do?" and he said, "Well, write a proposal." I have never wrote a proposal in my life before and he said to write a proposal to the National Science Foundation. I told him, "To do what?" He said, "Do anything that you want - to study a biological subject, for instance, primary production." I said, "What's that?" Here, I was trained at the University of Washington in fisheries population dynamics and he was telling me about doing something that I... well, I knew something about the subject, but never really had any prowess in it. So, he said you should just try it. So, I wrote a proposal. I'll never forget that. I wrote a proposal to NSF and to give you an extent of my knowledge of the subject, the whole proposal, including the and the budget was something like maybe three to four pages. That's the extent of my knowledge of the subject at the time and it was called The Primary Productivity of the Drake Passage Antarctica. (150) And I just left it like that. It was just to get him off my back, so to speak. Then I forgot about it and a few months later, the secretary of the department burst into my office and he said, "Congratulations, Dr. El-Sayed. You got your first grant!" I said, "What grant?" And she said, "The proposal that you wrote to do the work in the Drake Passage." I said, "Oh, did I?" Well, at that time, I remember, it was $26,200 that was the total proposal for the grant. At that time, Captain Capurro went to Argentina and he started bombarding me, long before the time of the telex or , with telegrams telling me that the ship will be leaving on such and such a day and will I hurry up and bring the equipment.

8 8 BS: Argentine ship? El-S: Argentine ship. The Captain Canepa. And I didn't have any equipment. I didn't have any students, so I was lucky at that time. Again, everything was Kismet here. There was a famous Japanese science entrepreneur.. no, business man - his name is Dr. Torii. BS: Dr.Torri? He's a very good friend of mine. He was up in the Arctic. El-S: Oh yes, that's him. And he was visiting the department of oceanography at that time - and he came to visit with me and he realized that I was somehow rather not feeling too well about having to go to Argentina to do work and I do not have students. I had one student and I needed more help and he said, "Well, how many do you need?" And I said, "Well, at least I do need two scientists." And he said, "You will have them and they will be here in about maybe 10 days or two weeks." BS: He sent Japanese? El-S: So, he sent two Japanese scientists and I will give you their names later on. One of them turned out to be one of the most illustrated geochemists in the country. So, I had with me my first Ph.D. student. His name was Byunig Don Lee. He was only 6 years my junior. BS: He was from Texas A&M? El-S: He was at Texas A&M and he was my first Ph.D. student, and later on, he worked with me, got his Ph.D at Texas A&M and his dissertation won the best dissertation at

9 9 Texas A&M in Later on, he became the President of the University of Pusan in South Korea. BS: Is he president today? El-S: He died, unfortunately, about two or three years ago. He was one of the most illustrious students that I ever had and I do remember, I have his dissertation in my office. Unfortunately, it was never published. And when it was sent to him to review as a possible publication, Dr. Martin Johnson at Scripps said, "I could not believe that this is the product of a graduate student." He felt it was too professional, the drawings and everything. He said that he just could not believe that a graduate student could do that. Unfortunately, it's never been published. (200) BS: He was older though, you said. Probably more mature than most graduate students. El-S: Who? Oh, he was. And so, we really had an international group that descended on the Argentines. Here was Captain Canepa who was an American born, and at that time I was not naturalized. I became naturalized in 1965, so at that time I was still carrying an Egyptian passport. To have an Egyptian polar scientist working in Texas, two Japanese scientists, a Korean and just kind of a. Actually, we had an American grant and an Argentine... it just could not be more international than that. I had a chemical oceanographer that I borrowed from the chemical oceanography section and he came with me. And that started my love affair with the Antarctic. That was the first cruise that I made in 1963, I think, or '62 if I still remember.

10 10 BS: So, you began your love affair with the Antarctic. El-S: Yes. And that love affair lasted until today. It changed my life and it changed numerous, numerous incountable number of lives that came within the field of my influence. BS: That's one of the questions I often ask at the end of these interviews: "How did the Antarctic affect you?" El-S: Deeply, deeply. BS: For me, it's the most dynamic group of people I've ever been associated with and I've seen a lot. The Navy had a lot of people, you know. In my days, they were all World War II senior officers with medals and fighting, Japan and all that. But Antarctica... El-S: Something about that white continent, you know. I don't know what it is. BS: But, these people like Larry Gould and others, they rubbed off on you. El-S: Oh yes, yes. Zumberg, Lee Washburn. [George Llano] had a tremendous. So, my association with the Argentines was begun in 1963, if I'm not mistaken, and lasted for at least several years. And I made about maybe 9 or maybe 10 or 12 cruises with them to the Antarctic, taking my students with me. I worked on several of their ships - Captain Canepa to start out with and then mostly on the icebreakers, the San Martin - the General San Martin - and also there is another ship, the Admiral Isidar, if I'm not mistaken. I think I'll dredge up the name again of another ship, another icebreaker.

11 11 This was the first time and then when I was still working with the Argentines on Argentine vessels, they had at that time, an international Weddell Sea expedition and that was my first introduction to a mini-international expedition because at that time the participants were from the United States, from Canada, from the FRG - that would be the Federal Republic of Germany - Germany was not unified at that time, and we have Argentina. So, we have US, Argentina, Canada and FRG. (250) BS: Canada was there? El-S: Canada was there, believe it or not. BS: That was before they signed the treaty. El-S: And one of the memorable things, scientifically speaking about this expedition was that I came across one of the most extensive bloom of phytoplankton off the Filchner Ice Shelf, but I don't think that there ever had been a report or a scientific report or paper that even rivaled the extent of that bloom. BS: That far south. El-S: That far south. It was unusual. BS: It's usually covered with ice.

12 12 El-S: But this year, believe it or not, we always wondered what really happened to the pack ice because it was almost ice free. It was so unusual. BS: It was for Weddell, too. El-S: Weddell Sea, yes, that's what I was talking... All the way, all the way. BS: Now it' a big deal... global warming. El-S: And I wrote a couple of scientific papers on that here and this is one...i'll never forget that expedition. BS: What year was that? El-S: That was back in 1974, if I have... BS: It's not important. Just about... El-S: Also, in that expedition here, interestingly enough, oh yes, there were Norwegians on that International Weddell Sea Expedition, so we had that, too. So, at that time, [Mosby], Professor Mosby from Oslo University sent two of his students, actually two of his shall we say co-workers from the Bergen Institute to put current meters to study the bottom water - formation of the bottom water in the Weddell Sea because this is the origin of most of the water in the Antarctic comes from - actually 90% comes from the Weddell Sea. And they were very lucky on account of the fact that we had hardly any ice. It was ice free there, so it was no problem whatsoever to put them there. They were very happy.

13 13 The following year they tried to recover them and they were not able to get even close to the area because it was covered with ice and the third year, the same thing. And the fourth year, finally, they were able to retrieve them and guess what? The batteries were still working and the meters were still... BS: They had four years of data? El-S: They had three or four years of data actually, uninterrupted. That was the first time that was actually done and this was done during the International Weddell Sea Expedition. And so, when I finished working in the Atlantic sector of the Antarctic, I had an opportunity to work on the Pacific sector. At that time, I shifted from the Argentine vessel to the USN El Tanin. (300) BS: Who was the skipper of the El Tanin? El-S: There were so many of them because... BS: Richard Thornton? Do you remember Richard Thornton? El-S: Could be. BS: Big guy? El-S: There is another one... he died recently. I read about that. But, I started with the El Tanin on Cruise 19. And I stayed on - not myself, but some of my students and

14 14 associates - up to the very last cruise of the El Tanin on Cruise 52. And all the data that I collected got to the public - vity, chemistry, physical oceanography, all of them now have been deposited with the National Oceanographic Data Center - NODC. BS: All the data is with the National... El-S: National Oceanographic Data Center - NODC. BS: And where is it? El-S: In Washington, DC BS: In Washington. El-S: In Washington, DC. And I have a copy of it and I think maybe I also have that on disk here. And so, after we finished that, then we moved to the... BS: What were the dates from Cruise 19 to Cruise 52? Cruise 19 was about '63? El-S: No, no, no. It was much later than that. It was ten years. I can't quite remember. BS: That's ok. From the mid-'60s to the mid-'70s. El-S: Yeah. Mid-'60s. I think it was '68, if I'm not mistaken. What is really interesting about these El Tanin cruises here is that almost one or two cruises became a landmark in marine biology or in biological oceanography.

15 15 BS: How is that? El-S: Before I came on the El Tanin, for the most part, the ship research was called multi-disciplinary, so we had the most people working on the physical oceanography, Scripps working on the such and such, the hodge-podge of programs there. The biological program was almost annoying - an annoyance to the geophysicists because they wanted to keep the ship running all the time so they can do all this work with the geophysics. And then on the other side, the biologists want to stop the ship and look to do the productivity work and they have to wait for the Institute work and so that was really very cumbersome and created a lot of tension between the biologists and the physical oceanographers. (350) So, I approached Dr. Llano - he was at that time the manager of the program, the biology and - with the idea, why can't we - the biologists - have the ship all to ourselves to do an integrated study of the marine Antarctic system there whereby we can get some physical oceanographers, we can provide them from Texas A&M, we can get meteorologists which we have at Texas A&M, we can study the phytoplankton, we can study the zooplankton, we can study all aspects of the behavior or the biochemistry of the organisms and we can - and particularly with regard to the krill and that's why we have to enlist the support of Allison McQueeny of DePauw University and we have to study the bacteria, marine bacteria, so we have to get Dr. Morita from Oregon State University. BS: Who? El-S: Morita. Richard Morita.

16 16 BS: At Oregon State? El-S: At Oregon State. BS: Is he there today? El-S: I think he is an emeritus professor and he was one of the students of [Claude Zumell] that I met at Scripps. And I have to get [Holm Henson] from Scripps Institution to do some work with regard to complement the work I am doing with the phytoplankton and we have to get some Australians to do a study related to the phytoplankton, so it was almost like an international sort of expedition there. And the reason behind that - it has a reason for the study of the ecosystem - at that time the marine exploitation of the Antarctic resources began. We knew that the Russians were after the krill and we felt that if, now with the decimation of the world populations and the field populations, that actually maybe they thought there was a surplus of Antarctic krill and here we have hungry masses, the population, the world population is exploding. People are actually hungry for protein material and so we thought that the area, or they thought the area could be exploited with impunity. That will be the Antarctic marine resources and particularly the krill. For the most part at that time, the fishes there has been showing signs of being overexploited. So, the only resource left was the Antarctic krill, there you see. So, at the time, there was a concern. We felt the scientific community has got to do something about it, that we're not going to sit down idle and see the same thing that happened to the Peruvian anchovies and to the sardines in California, to the cod and herring fisheries in the North Sea. They have the same thing and this is what is going to happen to the Antarctic krill and we knew that the krill is the most important creature in

17 17 the whole marine Antarctic ecosystem and if anything would happen to the krill, the whole ecosystem would collapse. There is no shock absorbers in the system there. (400) BS: The shortest food chain in the world. El-S: And with this in mind, and at that time I was involved in SCAR. I was a member of the biology working group. So, I expressed that concern to SCAR and they felt that something has got to be done about that area. And so, that is why in Cruise No. 46, and I was chief scientist on that cruise, and this is the time when I really put the whole plethora of activity on this cruise here to study the Antarctic ecosystem from the solar radiation all the way down to the bottom to the organisms. We studied almost everything except for the mammals there. At that time, that expedition was 1968, if I'm not mistaken. BS: Let me ask a question here. The El Tanin went to Argentina for a while. El-S: Yes, and became Isola su Casa. That was back in See the El Tanin's last cruise was In 1973, we turned it over and they changed the name to Isola su Casa. And I also took part in that and I sent some of my students there. So, I'm going to skip that part about the international involvement and the creation of the BIMASS program to continue my... After we finished the Pacific sector, we went to do the Indian sector of the Antarctic. BS: Yeah, we want to come back and talk about that.

18 18 El-S: Oh absolutely, yeah. From the India sector of the Antarctic, at that time, we were working still from the El Tanin from Perth, Australia, down to... we worked on the southeast part of the Pacific on the Indian sector and then I was invited to work with the French on another sector of the Indian Ocean and that would include the [Caragueran] Island and down to the Antarctic, Caragueran and [Crozier] Island, and this was aboard the ship called the Marion Durfrend. And so I did work with the French for about two or three cruises on the Marion Durfrend, and then to continue that sector and moving west to here to finish my circumnavigation of the Antarctic, I had an opportunity to work with the South Africans on the two ships that they had at that time - two different years - the Agulhas and the other one was the Afrikanna II. BS: Now, these were tour ships? El-S: No, no. These were supply ships, supply and research vessels. And it was on the Afrikanna that I thought that we are finished. Here, we thought the end is near. We were in Prince Bay and it was a beautiful, beautiful sunny day there. Everyone was enjoying it immensely there and then later in that day, we noticed that the weather began to be stormy and there were lots of small bergie bits. We didn't think too much of it at that time until it became very serious. And to complicate an already complicated situation here, one of the rudders on the ship, the shaft was caput, absolutely beyond repair. And then they turned to the auxiliary one and after a few hours, the damn thing konked out. So, we were sitting there with no power whatsoever. And the ship was just popping up and down and then you'd have the bergie bits very menacing there. And this lasted for about three days. And I never thought in my life that I would be... my cabin was next to the radio shack and the radio operator was sending an SOS message.

19 19 BS: Well, you can be... if you get in one of those big storms, you'd broach. The waves would.. (500) El-S: Oh yeah. And we really, really felt that this is it here because we were so far away from land, from any land. We were at least 2000 nautical miles from Cape Town. Here we are and no way - we could not go back to [Britts] Bay because actually by that time it was clogged with icebergs. So finally we got a message from the Black Sea, it was a Russian trawler. They got our message and they said they would be glad to come and help us. But, they said they were at least maybe 8 hours from where they have to come against the current. BS: Where were they? El-S: They were to the east of us in Britts Bay, so they have to go against the circumpolar current and so they said it will be at least 8 hours. We were not quite sure if the ship can even last that long there. And I do remember at that time, when we saw at the horizon there was some ship coming - there was a light there - there was jubilation on the ship. But at one time, we really thought this is the end of it. And I'll never forget the thought afterwards. I had one of my students, Larry Weber- he's now at the National Science Foundation - and he was sharing the cabin with me. BS: Larry Weber? El-S: Larry Weber, yes. He's the head of the International Section dealing with Korea as well as Japan. Very fluent in Japanese language. He is one of my very best students if not

20 20 the very best. And so, at that time I walked in there and I saw that he was taking the life jacket as if he's going to lie down and so I kind of screamed at him. I said, "If this the time to do it. It's a bad omen!" And he said, "What's the matter? I'm trying to prop up my head." He was just using it like a pillow or something. I never forgot that. There was no concern. So, I never forget that I said, "Is this the time to DO it?" (550) And so, we managed. The South Africans managed to send, later on, one of the biggest tugboats that they ever had from Cape Town and they towed us all the way miles - from Britts Bay all the way to Cape Town. BS: How long were you adrift? El-S: About three days. And the wind was howling. I almost thought that it was really a comedy to think that they can get the lifeboats down. NO Way! NO way! They would not have a chance! BS: The problem is with the wind and the sea, you broach, and then the seas wash your lifeboats away. El-S: And I do remember in those days, we used to go down at lunch time, actually it was very good and camaraderie and all the people talking and they usually have a small bar in the area, and you go there during those three days - memorable three days, actually - very few people showed up. Very few people and those who did had very little appetite and they would eat in silence and then they would go back to their rooms. Everyone

21 21 really thought that we're not going to make it. So, this is one of the many things that I tell about life as an Antarctic scientist. Less momentous and less dangerous was on the Argentine icebreaker, when we were stuck for about a week in ice, and we really felt... BS: You were on an icebreaker? El-S: Yes. BS: Which icebreaker was that? El-S: This was the San Martin. And I have a picture, maybe I can show it to you. BS: And where was it stuck? In the Weddell? El-S: In the Weddell Sea, yeah. And we felt that well, we will try to emulate what Shackleton actually did. It just was quite a sight to see. BS: Did it crush any of the ribbing? E-S No, it did not. It was a good ship. There was no question about that. But, we felt that we had enough provisions, supplies, that it can last. So, we were not quite concerned about that. (600)

22 22 BS: Actually, you weren't going to emulate Shackleton. You were going to emulate Filchner. El-S: Filchner, yeah. BS: Filchner was before Shackleton. Shackleton was trying to emulate Filchner. (End of Tape 1 - Side A) (Begin Tape 1 - Side B) (000) BS: We were talking about how scary it was on that ship. El-S: Yes, and we talked about my working with the French as well a working with the South Africans. Oh yes, this was during the storm. This where we had all the disaster there. And so, that was the extent of my scientific cruises in the Antarctic with my students. A lot of dissertations came out of that. There is a list of that in here. And also Master's degrees. Most were Ph.D. students. The first one was Byunig Lee from Korea and the last one, but it was not in the Antarctic, was from Chile. A fellow by the name of. BS: How was your relationship with Mary Alice? El-S: Very good. She was a very, very dear close friend.

23 23 BS: I didn't mean it that way. Did she study under you or was she a contemporary? El-S: She was a contemporary. No, no, she was a professor, actually, and our work complimented, because of my interest in the krill, because of the phytoplankton and this is what I studied there and she was interested in the behavior of the krill and their biology and she is one of the top-notch scientists. I wrote an obituary about her. This was published in the BIMASS Newsletter, I think, later on. BS: Yes. But, she was on the El Tanin, on many cruises. El-S: Yes, she was. Cruise No. 46. You remember this is the time when George [Llano] gave me carte blanche. He said, "If I will give you the ship here and you go ahead and just collect the scientists that you would like to work with." So, one of them was, as I said, Morita from Oregon State, Holm Hensen from Scripps and we got the Harry from Australia and we got some from New Zealand and we got most of them from A&M and then Mary Alice and her group, actually, came and they were studying the behavior and the physiology of the krill there, you see. BS: She was at Chicago? El-S: Yes, she was at DePaul. And she, when I said that my last cruise was actually 51 and 52, Mary Alice was the chief scientist. She was the first woman chief scientist. BS: Chief Scientist on Cruise 52? El-S: The last cruise of the El Tanin. The very last cruise of the El Tanin.

24 24 BS: That's when it was the El Tanin. El-S: It was the El Tanin before it was what it is now. BS: So... 51, 52. El-S: No, 52. Not 51. Cruise 52. BS: Now, when did you say your last cruise down there was?? El-S: Well, I think that was the last one that I made, cruise 52. BS: Ever go on the Hero? El-S: No. I never did because for the most part, the Hero mostly - it started and, this is also again George Llano and he is the one that was behind that project of the Hero and it was meant to be to study the movement of the seals and the whales, for the most part. And that is why it was a wooden ship and I think it was also a sailing ship because the idea is to turn off the engine so as not to disturb the whales. And then later on, it became along with that, they used it to study the krill population around the peninsula region there, during the summer. And during the winter, the Antarctic winter I'm talking about, they used to move the ship to study the area around the Chilean archipelago there. It was a very good ship - the Hero. I wrote the history - maybe you ought to have a copy of that - about, it's called "The Historical Perspective of the Antarctic Marine Research." You can read about the

25 25 history of all from the Phase No.One, beginning circa 1800 to the present, from Bellingshausen, all this here. BS: I'd like to have a copy of that. (50) El-S: You'll love this. And this is No. 2, what's called the heroic age, circa between 1900 and This would include the German expedition to Deutschland and then the early heroic age and then the French, the Pourquoi Pas with Captain Charcot and all that. And then Nord de, Northern Shoulder, the Antarctic and all this. And then Phase No. 3 between the First World War and the IGY year. This is the most discovery expedition. And then the IGY years and this is exactly the year of exploration and then the post-igy period. This is what I call the El Tanin years. And then after that, the spinoff of the El Tanin investigations - the establishment of the Smithsonian sorting center that came out of the El Tanin. because they had millions and millions of samples that have to be sorted out. And so George Llano again, was able to get a grant to Jim Wallin to start the Smithsonian Data Center there. And there is the publication of the Antarctic publications, and then they will talk about the BIMASS years, which we will talk about later on. And so, I have maybe a copy of that or maybe I can give you a copy of this one here. And we're talking about, contemporary with the El Tanin period mention should be made of the Hero, the 125 foot size trawler, diesel power, sail equipped, wooden in construction, properly is named for the Nathanial Palmer sloop of 1820 fame. It is reported that when Stillhouse saw the Hero, he remarked to the then director of the National Science Foundation, "You fellows have built an antique." This comes from Joel Hedgepath. The ship was primarily designed as a quiet ship to make recordings of

26 26 underwater whales and seals. The ship also served as a floating... Yeah, you'll be interested in that here. BS: You called that "A History of Biologic Exploration in Antarctic?" El-S: An historical perspective. This was written after the whole volume that was published after the IGY. BS: Volume 70. El-S: And I was asked to write an introduction to that volume. BS: Robin Ross. So, when do you say your last cruise was down there? El-S: BS: And you haven't been back since? I know you send people and... El-S: Yes, yes. You see, at that time, the theory is you know the. I did not go myself. Let me see, I'm trying to remember. BS: It was Cruise 52 and that was what year? E-S '72. No, after that, oh yes, I did work with the South Africans and also with the Germans on the Polar Stern, maybe two or three cruises. So, I think that was in the '80s.

27 27 If I'm not mistaken that was in '84, the Polar Stern. And I had Weber with me on the Polar Stern. And let me see, I'm trying to remember. I should have kept an index now or a chronometer of that year, but I think maybe... BS: The first cruise for the Polar Stern was about '82, as I recall. That was when I went back. El-S: Polar Stern was a fantastic ship, actually. So, I did work with the Argentines. I never did with the Chileans, as such, but with the French and with the Germans and South Africans. (100) BS: So, tell me about the Polar Stern. How good a ship was it? El-S: Oh, it was absolutely. It was a luxury ship. I wasn't used to that. It was a luxury ship. Same like the Marion Durfrend. I mean there is nothing comparable to the Polar Stern. It has a swimming pool and all that. BS: Multi-disciplinary... El-S: Well, that's exactly how the whole BIMASS program started with two things happening at that time. A - the Russians, not only the Russians, but the Eastern bloc were really after the krill population and the Japanese were still going after the whales and we felt we were not going to sit down on our fannies and wonder what was going to happen to the marine ecosystem-system. So, we decided to take the matter into our own hands. So, what happened is that in 1972, and I have a chronology of that in here I can give you.

28 28 Dates are important here. There was a SCAR meeting - SCAR biology we usually have every four or five years. The first one started in Paris and then the second one that I attended was in Cambridge in This is when I met Gordon and the and big, big luminaries there. So, in 1972, there was a meeting of SCAR biology group and I've got to tell you a story about that. BS: That was in Cambridge? El-S: No, that was in Canberra. And at that time, we felt I made the presentation that we ought to do something about the preservation, or actually SCAR felt that the marine biology section felt something ought to be done about that. And so they established a subcommittee on the marine living resources of the biology working group - SCAR biology working group - and then there was a sub-committee. And I was selected or elected to be the chairman of that sub-committee. BS: So you were on the sub-committee of the... El-S:... subcommittee on the marine resources of the southern ocean and again, all of this you'll find very well documented in this introduction to this book that I wrote. That I edited. And so, SCAR realized that there was a problem on the horizon to be tackled and so they established this committee in 1972 and then there was a meeting at McGill University in Montreal where it was something to do with the study of the polar programs - you know, here is the Arctic as well as the Antarctic. And at that time, I met with George Knox who was the chairman of the committee on biology committee of SCAR. BS: Is he from Australia?

29 29 El-S: No, from New Zealand. And George was there and we had the late Dr. Numoto and then we decided that there ought to be some sort of meeting of the nations in good terms to be held in Cambridge, England, in From there, and again I can give you this later, we felt there were tremendous gaps in our knowledge about not only the krill, but about the whole ecosystem - how it works and all that. (150) So, it was felt at that time that maybe we should hold an international conference on the marine resources to be held in the United States and we selected Wood's Hole Oceanographic Institution, to be under the auspices of the polar programs or the polar committee of the National Academy - the one that at the time was Lou degalle. BS: Polar Research Board? El-S: Yeah. With general support from the National Science Foundation and the one that got the money for us was good old George Llano. And that was in August, And that was the birth of the BIMASS program there. We sat down - we had no less than maybe 15 countries represented. I was chairman of the meeting, and we came up with the document or report, actually, which we labeled as the BIMASS - BIMASS was an acronym that was coined by Dick Laws. Maybe you know him. BS: I know Dick very well. He ran the British Antarctic Survey. El-S: I saw him last September and he told me he had just finished writing a biography of Vivian to be published by the Royal Society there. At any rate, so it starts - it's a

30 30 biological investigation, the acronym BIMASS - biological investigation of marine Antarctic systems and stocks, which turned out to be one of the thorns in the side of good old Ted, I mean Todd. He never liked this program. He never liked me for that matter because I was really a champion for that cause. I was the convener of this meeting and so we published two or three books that came out of that year. The people that were presenters... it was a very, very successful meeting. BS: Did Todd come? El-S: No, no, no. George Llano, he wouldn't come, no. I don't know whether George came or not. Maybe he did. But, this is the start of the whole thing of what I recall the internationalization of science in the Antarctic. It was very reminiscent of the IGY year. (They take a break). El-S: So, we were talking about how we started the first investigation of the marine Antarctic ecosystem there. We realized that if we have to know something about the krill population which is the most important organism in the Antarctic, that we have to know exactly what they feed on, their behavior, their physiology, and their migration, and so on and so forth. My interest in that is that the krill actually feeds on the phytoplanktons which is called the grass of the sea. (200) And you have to realize that all flesh is grass, even in the sea. And that is how we started my work in the Antarctic, to determine the productivity of a given area. Now why is it that some areas are more productive than others? And this is what really got me

31 31 interested in the first place. And then we realized, too, that we did not know anything about the movement or even the location of the krill during the wintertime. And this has been an enigma in research for many, many years until recently during maybe the past 10 or 15 years, when people realized - they found out - that krill can exist during the wintertime under ice and in the ice. And so, they do not stop growing, as we always thought that they stopped growing during the winter time, but for the most part, they were feeding on these small, little organisms that we call the phytoplanktons. If you ever dive one of the holes - the seal's hole - this is what actually did here. He found a lot of them, almost like a mass, you can swish it around there - a tremendous amount and the krill were able to survive the winter months there. And then we realized also that in order to understand the ecosystem, which in the Antarctic is the main organism there, that we have to study what are the factors that affect the productivity of the area, so we have to study the amount of solar radiation and we have to study also the nutrients there - not only the nutrients that we know of. I mean we have the micronutrients, and so on and so forth. And one thing led to another and so really the best way to do it was just to study the whole marine Antarctic ecosystem, starting with the solar radiation and down to how it affected the phytoplankton and how the phytoplankton affected movement and the concentration of the krill. Now recently, and this is the last work that I did in the Antarctic here about the effect of ozone depletion on the marine Antarctic ecosystem. When I submitted the proposal to the National Science Foundation, they did not know what the hell to do with this proposal because at that time, no one even thought that the ozone depletion would have any affect on the marine ecosystem. But, from a preliminary experiment that I conducted with some money that was given to me - it was a small grant that I got from NOAA - one of my studnts made a very primitive experiment at Palmer Station and he was able to find that there is a deleterious effect of the ultra-violet radiation, particularly UVB, on the phytoplankton there.

32 32 (250) So, we submitted a proposal to the National Science Foundation saying that where the ozone hole is getting bigger and bigger, the ozone depletion is getting to be a problem, and we wanted to find out what effect, if any - we're not quite sure about that. And that was the first experiment that was ever done in the southern ocean in the field showing beyond any reasonable doubt that the UVB had a deleterious effect on the survival of the phytoplankton. BS: Phytoplankton. El-S: And it turned out to be that not all the phytoplankton. They were rather selective. Some are more vulnerable. Some others, actually, are not in the least bothered by that. And that was quite a revelation. BS: Did it displace those that were bothered by it? El-S: Well, we don't if they displaced them, but the experiment indicated that it really does have a very inimical effect - deleterious effect. BS: The bottom line is the decrease in food for the krill. El-S: And as I said, if anything happens to the krill, the whole ecosystem will collapse. And this is the first time, ever, that this study was carried out in Antarctica. And that was done in And the first paper was published back in the very first year and we were

33 33 able - people at that time felt that no, can it be true? Because ultra-violet radiation and particularly UVB does not penetrate more than a meter, maybe two meters, three meters at the most. In other words, it would be absorbed. So, why El-Sayed is getting excited about the whole thing? And so when I sent the paper to be published, one of the reviewers said, "Well, could you prove, could you show us, that UV can actually penetrate to actually something like 10 meters?" Well, I was able to find out from the literature that back in 1950, there was a paper published in Nature, showing that the UVB can penetrate to a depth of 20 meters. Thereupon, the paper was accepted for publication. And that was the first paper that was ever published on the effect of the UVB on Antarctic phytoplankton. And from there on, the door was wide open. There are at least, I'm not exaggerating, about maybe dozens and dozens of research that is being carried out and symposiums, seminars and what have you about the effect of UVB, not only on the phytoplankton, but other organisms as well, including even some of the marine mammals. BS: Look at me. I got skin cancer from it, UVB. El-S: They claim that at least one million operations have been done on cataracts now in the United States, some of them attributed to the effects of the ultra-violet radiation. Now, they also claim that the seals and particularly the elephant seals in Antarctica that are for the most part sitting there all of the time, with their eyes wide open. Some of them actually claim that they probably will be affected by that in the area. And there is a whole literature on that area. So, I think one of the contributions that I made in Antarctica is that I really did open the door to other investigators to find out the effects of the ozone depletion on the marine ecosystem. (300)

34 34 BS: So, you opened the door on that. El-S: The first paper ever that was published on that... BS: Did you know Joe [Farnham]? El-S: Joe...? BS: He's the one that rang the bell. From England. El-S: Oh, yes. BS: British Antarctic Survey. He's a friend of mine. El-S: Oh yes. I don't think... Farnham, oh yes. I don't think I actually met him. As a matter of fact,i always said that he was working with very antiquated equipment that he had. The spectrogeometer that had. BS: But, he noticed the difference. El-S: And lots of people did not give a damn about that, because for the most part, they stopped at 60 degrees south latitude here. They felt that the effect of radiation would not really be that important, and then, when Joe Farnham published his paper, they went back to the records and started cracking out some of the old data and low and behold, they found oh, yeah. And so, that was back in I'm really proud of the work that I did. We do that on a shoestring operation at that time.

35 35 BS: And you showed the deleterious effect. El-S: In BS: Those were people you sent down there. El-S: No, I went myself. As a matter of fact, one of my students, Carol - I'm trying to think of her name, she is the one who got her Ph.D. at Texas A&M working on the effect of the... yeah. And this paper I presented at the AAAS meeting, no, American Chemical Society Annual meeting in Miami, Florida, and got not honorable mention, but got an award for that area. And so, again, this is one of the things that I am really proud of that I did. It opened the door. BS: Had an effect on the protocol for environmental protection of Antarctica, didn't it? El-S: Yes. BS: Did you go to any of those meetings? El-S: I did, quite a bit. I was representing SCAR at that time. BS: So, you represented SCAR? El-S: Oh God, yes. I represented SCAR in so many, many meetings. I was for the most part the chairman for the working group - let me get this.

36 36 BS: So, you went to the consultative meetings of the Antarctic Treaty. El-S: Yes. BS: Did you notice, because of the depletion of krill, or did you map it out - phytoplankton, I should say - did you notice an effect on the krill. In other words, there wasn't as much food? El-S: Well, no. The experiment was not - that was only just a lab experiment, actually. We did not really find out whether or not, over the years... (350) BS: Is there a time factor? How long would the UV have to shine to kill the plant? A minute or two? A day? El-S: Sometimes maybe it could be a hour. It depends on the dose itself. BS: And angle. Radiation. El-S: And the time of the year. For instance, December-January is the time when the ozone hole is actually bigger and the effect of the UV will be much more intense. But, it will be cumulative. Now, the question is, do we have less production in the southern ocean now that we had before the ozone hole actually was with us. No one really knows. Tough to tell. But, of course, this will be reflected later on.

37 37 BS: So, you were talking about representing SCAR at the consultative meetings. You went to many of those, I take it. El-S: Many. Actually, the first one was in Buenos Aires back in the '70s. The first, the BIMASS was in And then in October, 1976, I actually reported at a conference at Wood's Hole and a recommendation was accepted by SCAR and Mendoza in Argentina. And let me see, then in August of 1977, I received the National Ocean commission and they had the meeting in London, and I was there at that meeting and then, here in Sept- Oct, 1977, to the 9th Antarctic Treaty consultative meeting was held in London, encouraging government to support the BIMASS program. The 9th Antarctic Treaty consultative meeting was held in London, with my recommendation to support the BIMASS program. BS: Dick Laws was there, I assume? El-S: Oh, yes. And then let me see. The first BIMASS newsletter was published back in 1979 and then we started the whole program there back in September, The first BIMASS experiment. BS: And that was supported by the Antarctic treaty? El-S: No, no, no. It had nothing to do with that. You see, BIMASS is actually a program of SCAR. BS: I meant SCAR.