S.D. Research Centers Probe Sea for Key to Life’s Riddles

SAN DIEGO — A man on a half-day fishing excursion off Windansea Beach feels a tug at the end of his line and minutes later hauls up a glistening 15-pound white sea bass.

A California gray whale surfaces off Point Loma, sending spray high into the air as it exhales through its blowhole. The animal swims easily at the surface for a few minutes, then takes a final gigantic breath and dives into the murky depths below.

A nuclear-powered submarine slips unseen out of San Diego Harbor bound for the Arctic. On board is a local scientist who will be closely monitoring the sub’s ability to communicate with satellites through the Arctic ice.

The owner of an opulent beachfront house in Del Mar stares with dismay at the pebble-strewn beach in front of her home, wondering where the sand went and if it will return.

Such things are part of everyday life along the coast of San Diego County. But they have something else in common, too--all are linked to ongoing research at one of San Diego’s four major oceanographic research institutions.

The institutions--Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the Naval Ocean Systems Center, the Southwest Fisheries Center and Hubbs Marine Research Institute--are all well-known in scientific circles. But none could be counted among San Diego’s landmarks.

No tourists mention them in the same breath as Balboa Park or the San Diego Zoo. No politicians talk of them as being crucial to the city’s future, the way they do about the burgeoning hotel and electronics industries.

Yet the research at these institutions provides nearly 4,500 jobs and pumps millions of dollars into San Diego’s economy. It affects local fishermen and TV viewers, government agencies and surfers.

The experiments involve everything from harbor sand to Arctic ice, marine mammals to ocean currents. Overall, San Diego is one of the top two centers for ocean research in the nation, the other being Woods Hole, Mass.

Why this is so has to do partly with the area’s mild climate and its easy access to a variety of ocean environments. Yet there is also truth to the claim by William Nierenberg, who retired recently after 11 years as director of Scripps, that San Diego is a good place for oceanographic research “because Scripps is here.”

The nation’s oldest and largest oceanographic research center, Scripps began in the summer of 1903 as a one-man biological laboratory that operated out of the Hotel del Coronado’s boathouse. With the help of local businessmen, the lab moved to La Jolla Cove, and in 1912 it became affiliated with the University of California and was renamed the Scripps Institution for Biological Research. Since then it has grown into a sprawling 200-acre facility with six oceangoing research ships, 1,200 employees and a current annual budget of about $60 million, half of it from the federal government and the rest from a variety of state and city funds and private donations.

Scripps has the highest public profile among the oceanographic research institutions here, due primarily to its prominent La Jolla location, its aquarium and public education program, and the accomplishments of its staff. Seventeen of its 82 faculty members belong to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, and the first oceanographer in space--Paul Scully-Power aboard the space shuttle Challenger in October, 1984--had a part-time teaching position at the institution.

As Nierenberg pointed out, Scripps over the years has served as a kind of magnet for oceanographers and the small, specialized manufacturing companies that cater to them. “You’ve got to give a great deal of credit to the early citizens (who supported Scripps) for recognizing that the oceans were important,” he noted.

“At the time, San Diego was absolutely nothing. Boston, San Francisco, Philadelphia and New York were all important places. . . . But it was a group of citizens here who, before anybody else in the whole country, recognized that the oceans should be dealt with scientifically.”

Nierenberg said San Diego’s proximity to underwater canyons, which have played a role in countless experiments, also make it a fairly good location for oceanographic research. But he complained about the lack of direct air connections from San Diego to cities such as Boston and Washington and went on to say, “If we had the money and the inclination we could transplant Scripps to any one of a dozen other places and we would do as well.”

Other scientists feel more strongly about San Diego, however. Douglas Inman, director of Scripps’s Center for Coastal Studies, said this area “is an ideal place to study the kinds of processes we’re interested in,” which include beach erosion and harbor sedimentation.

“We have real waves and real currents here,” explained Inman, “but on a scale where you can measure and understand them. The waves in Northern California are so damn big that you can hardly study them. Down here we get storms from the south and north, but in sizes we can handle.

“It may sound basic, but how do you even get to sea in big surf? For a lot of our experiments we use small craft launched from the end of the pier, and even here there are days when we can’t put the boat in the water.”

William Evans, executive director of Hubbs, agreed. “Logistically, there are a lot of advantages to this area,” he said, listing easy access to the ocean and the variety of “different environments within close range--offshore reefs, underwater canyons, islands and kelp beds” among them.

Housed in the north end of a Sea World storage building, Hubbs (named for scientist Carl Hubbs and his wife, Laura) is a poor cousin to Scripps. Formerly known as Hubbs-Sea World Research Institute, it has always had close ties to the aquatic theme park, and although it has been an independent, nonprofit foundation since it was founded in 1963, it relies on Sea World for its offices, water supply, energy and $125,000 a year in operating capital. Overall, it has 20 employees and a budget of about $1 million a year, most of it state and federal grants allocated for environmental studies.

The institute has an impact way out of proportion to its size, however, partly because its researchers tend to study animals of interest to the public--whales, seals, sport fish and others found along the coast. When a dead whale washes up on the beach, or sea lions steal fish from the lines of local fishermen, Hubbs experts are often contacted by TV and newspaper reporters for information. In addition, the institute solicits direct public involvement in some of its research projects.

For example, as part of a project to track gray whale migration through Southern California waters next January and February, Hubbs scientists plan to train volunteers in counting and observation techniques, then station them at various sites on the Channel Islands and along the coast.

“There are a lot of reasons for wanting to involve the public” in scientific work, said Steve Leatherwood, a senior research biologist at Hubbs. “But one of the big ones is that if you have public awareness and involvement . . . it’s often easier to get support for a new conservation law or some other conservation move. All too often scientists are so far removed from the public that they’re essentially dictating to the public.”

By concentrating primarily on research related to environmental laws and conflicts, Hubbs has developed a narrower and very different focus from that at Scripps. Scripps’s specialty is basic research--experiments that don’t necessarily have practical applications but answer scientists’ questions about the fundamental workings of nature. Its researchers travel the oceans of the world and are investigating a truly amazing variety of subjects, from how clams survive in sulphur-rich waters on the ocean floor to what role clouds might have in limiting the gradual heating of the earth’s atmosphere.

Another oceanographic institution here--the Southwest Fisheries--conducts studies that often are similar to those at Hubbs. “We don’t do oceanography for the sake of oceanography,” explained Izadore Barrett, the center’s director. “We do it to understand the biology and distribution of the fishes.

“We provide information on the condition of fish stocks . . . to our regional management offices and to fisheries management councils. But that needs to be backed up by studies on the biology and physiology of the animals, what the effects of predators and the environment are--a gamut of things that affect the fish available to sport and commercial fishermen.”

A research station of the National Marine Fisheries Service--a branch of the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration--the center is located in a large building just north of Scripps. It has 150 employees, its own oceangoing research ship and an annual budget of $11 million.

Scientists at the center are studying such things as the spawning rates of various fishes, new areas in the Pacific where tuna can be found, and the number of anchovies needed to sustain commercial quantities of popular sport fish such as albacore and sea bass. But although they are often involved in the same kinds of research that scientists at Hubbs are, there is little actual overlap and almost no competition for grants, according to Barrett.

“We have let contracts to Hubbs from this office and we’re working closely with them right now, studying the numbers and behavior of elephant seals on the Channel Islands” which may compete with fishermen for some kinds of fish, Barrett said.

“Hubbs has experts in some areas we don’t, and besides, some of our studies require short-term, fixed jobs. To tackle them ourselves, I’d have to hire people specially or divert people we already have from other projects.”

Both Southwest Fisheries and Hubbs also work closely with Scripps. Evans, Hubbs’ director, is a senior lecturer at Scripps, and some of the staff scientists and research associates at the Southwest Fisheries have part-time teaching positions at Scripps.

“What really makes San Diego unique in terms of oceanography,” said Evans, “is that it has a number of diversified organizations that do different kinds of research, yet all of them work closely together. It’s a very close community.”

For example, in February, scientists from Scripps, the Southwest Fisheries and the Naval Oceans Systems Center (NOSC) will all be taking part in a research trip on the NOSC ship DeSteiguer off the California coast. The Scripps scientists will be studying ocean currents and eddies, scientists from the Southwest Fisheries Center will be looking at the distribution of commercially important fishes, and NOSC scientists will be measuring physical properties such as temperature and salinity in the ocean’s upper layer.

The various institutions are “often involved in different aspects of the same research,” said Edward Frieman, Nierenberg’s successor as director of Scripps. “We and NOSC, for instance, are more complimentary than competitive.”

NOSC is the largest and most secretive of the four ocean research centers in San Diego. Its $550-million annual budget makes even Scripps’ budget seem puny by comparison, and many of its buildings have lead in the walls to prevent radio emissions from leaking out and radar waves from penetrating inside.

In contrast to the basic research done at Scripps and the “applied” research with practical benefits that Hubbs and the Southwest Fisheries specialize in, the overwhelming majority of research at NOSC involves producing or perfecting machines and processes of immediate benefit to the Navy. In other words, it is research in concert with development.

But it is a task the center does well. For example, much of the technology for the remotely operated undersea vehicles that recently photographed the Titanic and found the remains of the space shuttle Challenger was developed at NOSC.

NOSC’s 3,100 employees (90% of them civilians) are at work on such things as Arctic submarine warfare, new torpedo designs and the sonar capabilities of dolphins, among other research. In theory, only about half of the total research is classified but as a practical matter that includes the details of nearly every project under way.

Still, because of the huge amounts of defense funds that are funneled into it, NOSC has a greater economic impact on San Diego than the other ocean-research centers combined. According to NOSC’s commander, Capt. F.M. Pestorius, this year the center has let contracts worth a total of $120 million to some 65 companies in San Diego County alone.

Pestorius suggested that San Diegans are also affected indirectly by NOSC’s research on the Arctic environment and how it affects communications and submarine activities. “It has become clear to the Navy that the Soviets are using the Arctic in a major way. We have to be prepared to confront them there . . . and our ability to track and detect their submarines will depend on our ability to understand the Arctic environment,” he pointed out.

Oceanographic research affects the lives of San Diegans in other ways, too. The various studies under way here on the distribution, reproduction and behavior of animals such as gray whales, tuna, sea bass, elephant seals and abalone are clearly of vital interest to people who make their living from the sea.

And as Leatherwood of Hubbs noted, “If we can, through the work we’re doing, highlight problems, elucidate what needs to be done to prevent them from getting worse, and stop them before they reach a critical level, then . . . I think there is a return to the citizens of San Diego, too. But it’s difficult to demonstrate that to the man on the street, unless he makes his living on a gray-whale tourist boat or takes people out to the kelp beds to catch white sea bass.”

Nonetheless, it seems certain that in the future oceanography will play an increasingly important role in the everyday decisions of farmers, developers, fishermen and government agencies. “Oceanography has been exciting for the last 20 years,” said Nierenberg, “particularly in the areas of climate prediction and the movement of the oceans. It’s really very complicated mathematically . . . but now some understanding is beginning to emerge.”

Added Frieman, “Research is an exciting, challenging but also somewhat frustrating business. It has become abundantly clear over the last decade or two that the oceans are in fact part of a much larger global system, and that what is going on in the oceans can influence things like El Nino, acid rain, earthquakes, the climate . . . and one would like to be able to understand things so that problems our society faces can be alleviated.

“Will we ever achieve those goals? We don’t know, but they’re goals that are worthwhile . . . and we’re trying to design programs that will work toward them.”

Thursday: People who make their living off the ocean.