Big-Time Oceanography in Little Rhody

Editor’s note: The above headline was borrowed from longtime URI Graduate School of Oceanography Professor Ted Smayda, Ph.D., who uttered the phrase during a recent interview with ecoRI News and then immediately called it a little corny. We thought it was worth stealing.

By FRANK CARINI/ecoRI News staff

Ted Smayda has been working at the URI Graduate School of Oceanography since 1959. (Photo courtesy of URI)NARRAGANSETT — During the past five decades, Ted Smayda has watched the Narragansett Marine Laboratory change names and transform itself from a sleepy lab— his words — into a world-renowned oceanography institute.

The University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography (GSO) turned 50 this year and is hosting a weekend of open-to-the public events later this month to celebrate. Smayda’s work will be a big part of the festivities. In fact, a few days before the school’s birthday bash, current and former colleagues and students will spend two days celebrating Smayda’s contributions to the university.

His contributions, both big and small, are many. In 1967, he graduated the first woman student from the GSO — a Greek scientist named Lydia Ignatiades who went on to become a leading oceanographer; her work published in many well-respected journals.

That same year, Smayda also helped break the gender barrier on oceanographic research ships by getting a female graduate student — Brenda Boleyn — on a vessel back when captains still thought that women onboard were bad luck. The ship didn’t sink, and nothing went wrong.

“We successfully broke the no-women-at-sea barrier and I am particularly pleased with that accomplishment,” said Smayda, who turns 80 in August but doesn’t look a day older than 65.

The Jamestown resident began working for the facility when it was known as the Narragansett Marine Laboratory and still vaguely resembled the German prisoners of war camp that is was during World War II. In fact, when he was a graduate student at the university in 1953, the now 200-acre, 20-building URI Narragansett Bay Campus was no more than a field of barracks left over from the final days of Fort Kearny.

When he returned to the GSO campus in 1959 from Norway after earning a Ph.D. in marine phytoplankton from the University of Oslo, Smayda's first office was a former prison cell and it smelled of urine.

“The odor of urine was just incredible,” recalled Smayda, who returned as an assistant marine biologist and by 1961 was member of the faculty. “Things were really rustic to put it mildly.”

During his 52 years working at the then “sleepy” lab and now at one of the largest graduate schools of oceanography in the United States, Smayda has graduated 32 students from around the world, including Germany, Canada, South Africa and, of course, the United States. He has visited with scientists from Norway, Sweden and Japan.

He has been both mentee and mentor. Smayda, a leader in the study of phytoplankton, especially those that cause red tides, also helped build up the school’s library collections and he helped start the Narragansett Bay Plankton Time Series in 1959 — a weekly measurement of plankton abundance in the bay that continues today, the longest data set of its kind in the world.

“There’s lots of history here, and I was here when the place was just starting to grow,” Smayda said. “I’m thrilled I’ve been able to see it take shape.”

Impressive credentials
While Smayda is the only one still employed at the GSO when the facility didn’t even go by that name, the past 50 years has seen many memorable figures who have taught and learned at the waterfront campus that overlooks the West Passage of Narragansett Bay. 

The school’s founding dean, John Knauss, is a giant in the world of marine science, having served on the Stratton Commission, the first review of U.S. ocean policy, in 1969. He had a hand in the establishment of the URI programs in marine affairs, ocean engineering and resource economics. He brought the first research vessel to URI, the Trident — purchased for $500 — and the GSO’s current ship, the 185-foot Endeavor. He also played a key role in creating the National Sea Grant Program, which named a prestigious fellowship after him in 1988.

Physical oceanographer H. Thomas Rossby, whose career at the GSO dates to the 1970s, is an international leader in the study of ocean currents. He has invented numerous instruments used by physical oceanographers around the world, and he continues to be an innovator in this field.

Jean-Guy Schilling, who retired in 2003, is noted for his use of trace elements and isotopes to understand the composition and dynamics of the Earth’s mantle. He used the volcanic rocks on the seafloor as a window into the deep earth. He has published more research papers in the prestigious journal Nature than any other URI faculty member.

Hurricane expert Isaac Ginis, estuarine ecologist Scott Nixon and coastal ecologist Candace Oviatt – one of the first female graduates of the GSO — are other notable researchers.

Important research
The Graduate School of Oceanography's relevance also can be found in the scientific discoveries its researchers have made. Among the most important was the 1991 discovery by professors Haraldur Sigurdsson and Steven D’Hondt of impact glass in Caribbean sediment deposited at the end of the age of dinosaurs.

“This was a significant finding because it provided positive evidence that a large impact occurred at the time of the mass extinction,” D’Hondt said. “It also provided a clear fingerprint of the suspected impact crater and striking evidence that the impact was unusually damaging. A number of other people at GSO also greatly advanced understanding of the impact event, with studies by then-graduate students James Zachos and Lowell Stott and professors Michael Arthur, James Kennett and me showing that the impact had huge effects on the oceans, some of which lasted for millions of years.”

The Narragansett Bay fish trawl, which was started by Charles Fish in 1959 and which was later managed by Professor Perry Jeffries — a graduate school classmate of Smayda — and now by Professor Jeremy Collie, is another study that has global implications. The weekly trawl samples the fish community in the bay and has traced the seasonal and annual changes of marine creatures living there.

D’Hondt, David Smith and Arthur Spivack have made the GSO a world leader in the exploration for life deep beneath the seafloor. “The biomass and diversity of life in the seafloor rivals that on land,” Spivack said. “We’ve learned that life can exist with a metabolism 100,000 times lower than anyone thought before. And this research has implications for life on Mars, because the conditions in the deep biosphere are similar to that at the surface of Mars.”

Internationally known
The GSO is one of the most widely known graduate schools of oceanography in the world, with its 800 or so graduates working in academia, industry, government and environmental organizations around the globe.

Currently, about 80 students are enrolled — two-thirds in doctoral programs and a third in master’s programs.

The Rhode Island Nuclear Science Center’s 2-megawatt research reactor is situated on the cam­pus, as is the Atlantic Ecology Division of the Environ­mental Protection Agency and the Narragansett Labora­tory of NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center.

The faculty, marine research scientists and professional staff collectively generate more than $30 million annually in external funding, which accounts for nearly a third of the university’s total. In addition to government and private support for re­search and outreach programs, the GSO receives about $7 million annually in state support allocated primarily to salaries.

“Science research can often appear mysterious and complicated, so this event is intended to bring it out into the open and make it more accessible,” said David Farmer, dean of the Graduate School of Oceanography. “We will be opening the doors of the URI Narragansett Bay Campus to some of our wonderfully exciting facilities that few non-scientists ever get a chance to see."