Science and Sails (Memoir of first female oceanographer in a changing world)

By Kathryn Anne Burns

This memoir by Kathryn Anne Burns charts the career of the first woman graduate from the most prestigious oceanographic institute in the world, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint Program. The first chapter is the struggle and achievements of a graduate student who discovers a new test that will revolutionize efforts at monitoring toxins in the marine environment. The time scale is the early nineteen seventies at the beginning of global awareness of the dangers of unchecked coastal development that was ruining the ecological functioning of critical estuaries. Kathy is caught up in the urgency of saving the Oceans and is launched into a career which until this time was strictly a man’s domain and has to overcome the prejudices and downright hostility of male colleagues and associates who want to preserve their exclusivity.

Subsequent chapters follow Kathy and her husband, Robbie, around the world as Kathy takes up positions in Melbourne Australia, Monaco, Bermuda Biological Station, and then back to the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Townsville, Australia and their adventures in sailing between these positions on the world globe. Most people fly on commercial airlines but these two decided that was too tame, stocked their yacht with provisions and set sail. Not even Kathy’s chronic seasickness deters her and you have to wonder at her drive and determination, no doubt the same impetus to get her PhD degree at such a transitional time for women in science.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kathryn Anne Burns
• Release date: Jul 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311443946

Kathryn Anne Burns

Science and Sails (Memoir of first woman oceanographer in a changing world) is available on Smashwords.comI have over 100 publications in marine science which can be viewed on scholar google.http://scholar.google.com.au/citations?hl=en&user=1Sf-xhEAAAAJKathryn A. Burnsadjunct scientist (volunteer) Jan 2012 to presentJames Cook University, Box 974 Townsville, Qld. 4810 AustraliaPhone: 61 74727495 Fax: [phone] Email: [e-mail]: Dual: Australia and United States of AmericaProfessional Positions: Adjunct Scientist in Tropical Water Group atJCU and Sole Proprietor of KBurns Marine Geochemistry Pty. Ltd.ABN 84 487 106 808Education:B.S. 1970. Biochemistry (cum laude), Michigan State UniversityPhD. 1975. Biological Oceanography, Massachusetts Institute of Technology/ Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (First woman graduate).M.A. in Writing -James Cook University 2015Previous Research Positions:1993-2011 Principal Research Scientist, Australian Institute of Marine Science, Townsville, Qld. Australia1986-1993 Research Scientist at Bermuda Biological Station for Research1980-1985 Head of the Organic Chemistry Section of the International Laboratory of Marine Radioactivity, (I.A.E.A.) Principality of Monaco.1976-1980 Marine Chemistry Unit, Ministry for Conservation, Victoria Australia.

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Science and Sails

(Memoir of first female oceanographer in a changing world)

Kathryn Anne Burns

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Copyright 2015 Kathryn Anne Burns

ISBN 9781311443946

Synopsis for Sails and Science

This memoir by Kathy Burns charts the career of the first woman graduate from the most prestigious oceanographic institute in the world, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint Program. The first chapter is the struggle and achievements of a graduate student who discovers a new test that will revolutionize efforts at monitoring toxins in the marine environment. The time scale is the early nineteen seventies at the beginning of global awareness of the dangers of unchecked coastal development that was ruining the ecological functioning of critical estuaries. Kathy is caught up in the urgency of saving the Oceans and is launched into a career which until this time was strictly a man’s domain and has to overcome the prejudices and downright hostility of male colleagues and associates who want to preserve their exclusivity.

Subsequent chapters follow Kathy and her husband, Robbie, around the world as Kathy takes up positions in Melbourne Australia, Monaco, Bermuda Biological Station, and then back to the Australian Institute of Marine science in Townsville Australia and their adventures in sailing between these positions on the world globe. Most people fly on commercial airlines but these two decided that was too tame, stocked their yacht with provisions and set sail. Not even Kathy’s chronic seasickness deters her and you have to wonder at her drive and determination, no doubt the same impetus to get her PhD degree at such a transitional time for women in science.

Science and Sails

Contents

Chapter 1 Escape on Massasoit, 1970-1975

Chapter 2. Science Behind the Eight Ball, 1976-1980

Chapter 3. Building our Dream Boat and Ending up in Monte Carlo

Chapter 4. Adventures of Sydereal and Gyre

Chapter 5. Arrival in Monaco June 1980

Chapter 6. UN Mission to Oman, September 1980

Chapter 7 Follies of the Expert Group

Chapter 8. Chasing the Nukes in the Gulf of Lions

Chapter 9. Life in Monaco, Including Charlie’s 3M$ dive

Chapter 10. The Terrifying Crewman, 1985

Chapter 11. The Bermuda Triangle

Chapter 12. BBSR Jan 1986-Dec 1992

Chapter 13 Eclipse’s Crossing from Bermuda to Townsville, Including Disaster in the Pacific, 1993

Chapter 14 AIMS Dec 1993 to Dec 2011

Chapter 15 Epilogue 2015

Glossary of Acronyms

Chapter 1

Escape on Massasoit

Woods Hole, Massachusetts 1970-1975

Pacing back and forth in the little room awaiting the verdict with Robbie, my husband, sitting on the edge of the table, equally anxious, I thought Will they pass or fail me? An entire career as an oceanographer was hanging in the balance. This decision would determine my lifetime pursuit. Six scientists were in the lecture theatre discussing my PhD thesis and defence lecture. It was the culmination of five years of intense scientific effort. I had developed a new measure of stress in marine fish which would revolutionise pollution assessments. Plus I would be the very first woman graduate of the Joint Program in Oceanography between Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

The last month in Woods Hole was a whirl wind of activity and emotions. The thesis had to be typed; as this was 1975, before the joys of personal computers, internet or email. Plus teaching in the coastal oceanography course that the University of Michigan was running at the Marine Biology Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole kept me bustling at breakneck pace. Robbie was busy getting Massasoit, our thirty two foot sailboat, ready for a coastal voyage. Boxes of belongings were stashed in Professor John Teal’s barn. Being poor enough to qualify for food stamps but owning three sailboats and five dinghies, part of the fleet was being sold.

~~~~~

Robbie and I arrived in Woods Hole in June of 1970 with an eight foot day-sailor in tow, and full of enthusiasm to begin this new life chapter after four years at Michigan State University (MSU). This was the first class of graduate students in the biology and chemistry programs of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution-Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint Program (WHOI-MIT). Before this only ocean engineering and physical oceanography were offered. I chose oceanography because it was a discipline in which both of us should be able to work. I had a degree in biochemistry and was admitted to the biology program. Robbie’s area was electrical engineering and he hoped to work with the physical oceanographers as a marine technician. Although we had been high school sweethearts, we had only been married for one year. Robbie said he would follow me to graduate school as long as it was someplace we could sail. Thus we arrived with great anticipation revelling in the smell of salty sea air and the vision of the surrounding blue sea.

Map of Cape Cod Massachussetts showing areas mention in text.

(made from modified Internet download) K. Burns

The village of Woods Hole is at the southern end of Cape Cod. The ferry boats to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket Islands leave from there. The Elizabeth chain of islands projects into the Atlantic Ocean from Woods Hole, forming the eastern side of Buzzards Bay. The tidal races between the islands are called ‘Holes’. To reach the Cape from Boston or points further west, there are two road bridges and a railroad bridge over the Cape Cod Canal.

Woods Hole village was described as two bars (Captain Kidd and The Leeside) separated by a draw bridge. In fact the village was packed with marine science facilities. Fisheries Research was at one end of Water Street, with an outdoor tank that housed a pair of baby seals for the tourists to look at in summer. A boat ramp was next to their brick building, and Fisheries had a wharf out into Great Harbour to moor their research vessel. Next was the Marine Biology Labs (MBL), a world famous research facility, and it housed the MBL-WHOI library. This library offered so many journals, that only the Library of Congress surpassed it. Across the street and east down Water Street, WHOI had wharf facilities for their ships and several research buildings. The ferry wharfs were at the eastern end of Water Street. Falmouth is the city about four miles north of Woods Hole. Many of the dwellings along the roads of the southern Cape housed staff and scientists from the research institutions. (The construction of the Clark campus along Woods Hole road was started during my last year at the institution.)

~~~~~~

An oil spill in Buzzards Bay happened when the barge Florida ran aground during a storm in December 1969. Several of the Woods Hole scientists were studying the effects of the oil on marine communities along the West Falmouth coastline.

Professor John Teal, suggested Kathy, you should work on assessing the impact of the oil spill on the salt marsh, while thinking about what your thesis will focus on.

Teal was a well-known marine wetland ecologist. Max Blumer was a Suisse chemist and had developed the methods for trace hydrocarbon (oil) analysis. Max gave an emotional plea at a meeting in Rome in 1970 imploring the oil industry to clean-up their operations and quit polluting the oceans with oil. John Farrington and Manfred Ehrhardt were post docs in Max’s lab who taught me how to analyse for hydrocarbons and would continue be friends and mentor my career in future years. George Harvey was another chemistry prof who taught me and one other student an advanced organic chemistry course. The joint program was flexible and the students gained information from whatever sources were needed for thesis work, and from the scientists who were eager to teach. WHOI was primarily a research institution and the students were immersed in that atmosphere. This was a novel approach compared with other universities at the time and this suited me perfectly.

The damage the oil spill had done to the salt marsh was clearly visible with an area of oily mud still stinking of dead animals. The summer after the spill, everything was dead in the oiled creeks; no Spartina marsh grass and no crab holes were seen on the oily mud banks. I set traps to catch little fishes in the tidal waters in the creeks at the oiled marsh and at a healthy unoiled marsh for comparison. Sediments were collected to link the level of oil in sediments to the observed environmental impact. Everything at the oiled marsh had oil in it that first summer. Repeated observations the next autumn showed some crabs had returned. Everything still had oil in it, including the fish and crab tissues. Next spring the sediments were still oily but the fish were back in numbers and they seemed to have little oil in their tissues. Fiddler crabs that returned were all adults and seemed to dig only shallow holes; they would never survive the winter. They had oil in their tissues but never had more than a certain amount in them.

These observations, a degree in biochemistry and newly learned chemistry of oil methods helped formulate my thesis to search for hydrocarbon degrading enzymes in crabs and fish and show this as a means of adapting (or not) to the oil contaminated salt marsh sediments.

After clearing the proposal with the scientists in Woods Hole the next step was to get support from the biochemists at MIT in Boston. During the ride to the city, Professor Henry Stommel, a famous physical oceanographer, grilled the students with science questions creating a very tense atmosphere. I tried to be invisible because I had not yet taken the physical oceanography course and was afraid to be questioned.

Phil Robins, a biochemistry professor, was about forty years old, a thin, dark haired man, sitting behind a desk piled with books and papers.

Hi, I’m Kathy Burns in the joint program and am here to ask your advice.

The prof yelled It’s NOT a joint program. All you students stay down in Woods Hole and don’t come to MIT!

But you are my advisor and I sent you a draft proposal for comment.

Then Phil remembered the proposal and screamed That proposal is rubbish, because everyone knows only mammals have those enzymes.

There’s growing evidence that insects use enzymes to develop resistance to pesticides. If insects can degrade toxicants why not fish, at least they have livers.

The prof thought a minute, relaxed his brow, and said I am sorry, I should be familiar with that literature and I’m not. What can I do for you?

At twenty one years old, a small woman weighing less than a hundred pounds, getting such a barrage was traumatic. By keeping cool, a hostile situation was transformed into a friendly one. Being shaken to the bone, the Boston Fine Arts Gallery’s Japanese garden exhibit provided a refuge to meditate and think until the car returned to WHOI in the late afternoon.

The joint program paid university fees and provided a stipend for living expenses. To do the chemistry for the project, a grant was sought from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to purchase a new gas chromatograph for quantifying oil in samples. Methods for measuring the oil degrading enzymes were adapted from papers on insects. Four years of intense chemistry and biochemistry work followed.

Setting up for the enzyme work on the fish and crabs required an ultra- centrifuge which would spin out the proper cell fractions. Stanley Watson was a biochemist at WHOI who agreed to let me use the gear I needed. His lab was just down the hallway from Teal’s lab. Stan kept the rotor for the centrifuge on the lower shelf in a refrigerator in his office. One day I went in to get the rotor, bent down to pick it up and Stan pinched my bum.

I turned around holding the rotor (very expensive item) and said Stan if you do that again, I will drop the rotor on your foot.

Stan was never rude again; but a few other men would try their luck and get a similar rebuff.

I bought a little Honda motorcycle that I used to go out to the salt marsh to collect fish, sediments and crabs and take them back to the lab in Woods Hole. With a bucket hung precariously from the handle bar of the bike, the back roads proved the safest.

~~~~~~

Robbie had tried to get a job at WHOI and with his university background in electrical engineering, he could not understand why he was never hired when he applied for advertised jobs. The reason was made clear when one of my profs, Frank Carey, asked for his file which revealed that the FBI had compiled a report saying that Robbie was a subversive. This dated back to a psychology professor at MSU who Robbie thought was a friend, and spoke frankly about his views of the Vietnam war. That prof related these conversations to the FBI when she was questioned. Robbie had a part time job fixing the tape recorders in the language lab at MSU. He would eat his lunch while sitting on the steps of the building and listen to whatever rally was in progress in the adjoining square. Most protests then were about the war in Vietnam. The FBI took photographs with 1000 mm lenses from the roof on the building opposite. Since Robbie was in several photos they concluded he was a subversive. Thus the physical oceanographers with Office of Naval Research (ONR) funding could not hire him. It seems the government was just as paranoid as during the McCarthy era! We were angry and disheartened that the government could ruin the lives of innocent students, but rather than let this defeat us, resourceful Robbie went to work with friends doing carpentry work repairing many old houses in Woods Hole. We were terrified when he was called to Boston for a physical exam for induction into the war effort, but with fused vertebrae from a water skiing accident in Michigan, he was thankfully rejected by the army.

~~~~~~

We launched the little yellow sailboat in Little Harbour, and put it on a mooring; not knowing we had to paint the bottom with poison to keep marine growth off. Within two weeks someone had stolen the outboard engine and Chicken’s bottom was all over-grown. Learning this lesson, we scrapped and repainted. We sailed it fearlessly all around Woods Hole, taking her into deep water, thinking it would float if flipped.

~~~~~~~

Woods Hole had many houses owned by visiting scientists from more distant universities, who only lived in them in summer and rented them out in winter. Friendships were forged between students sharing houses. Charlie Krebs was a student at the Marine Biology Lab who was studying the biology of the fiddler crabs. Charlie and I published a paper in Science magazine tying the amount of oil in the sediments to the level of impact on the crabs¹. This paper stood alone for several years before any others related environmental oil concentrations to specific biological damage.

One winter Frank Carey offered to share his house in West Falmouth. Frank had a big old wooden farm house plus a yard with a forest of trees behind. Frank was a shark physiologist-ecologist studying deep sea sharks. He would catch a beast and insert an instrument pack with a radio transponder down its throats and thread the lead to a thermistor out through its gills; then toss the shark overboard and track it. The radio signal indicated the lateral movements and the water depth. By measuring the temperature difference inside and outside the shark, Frank determined which ones could control their internal body temperature, a process called thermoregulation. Then he would catch another of those sharks and bring it back to the lab to dissect and study it. Frank described a system in some sharks that enzymatically burn special brown fat deposits to make heat that is transferred to its blood by a series of overlaying arteries, which act as heat exchangers. The heat is pumped to its tiny brain and its eyes. This is part of the reason they are such efficient hunters. Dave Masch, John Teal’s technical assistant, helped Frank with these adventures. Dave was blond and Frank had red hair. These were the six foot tall handsome macho knock-about scientists in the town.

Frank Carey who described how some

sharks can thermo-regulate (WHOI archives).

When the movie film crew came to Woods Hole to shoot ‘Jaws’, Dave Masch caught all the sharks for them, including a great white. The locals were appalled to learn such sharks inhabit their waters. Many people vowed never to go in the sea again and some even said they were afraid of their bathtubs.

~~~~~~~

Publication of Rachael Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’² in 1962 and the first pictures of Earth from space, inspired environmental movements worldwide including protests against nuclear power and the slaughter of marine mammals. But it was not until late 1970 that the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) were legislated into existence. Bostwick (Buck) Ketchum organized a workshop in Woods Hole to assess the critical problems of the coastal zone in 1972. Sixty of the most active scientists and lawyers in the USA and Canada engaged in coastal pollution incidents met to discuss the issues and make recommendations for long term coastal planning³. Teal appointed me to the workshop staff providing the opportunity to meet many of these key people and to gain a much broader understanding of how the industrial complex was destroying many estuaries. This workshop galvanized my passion to try to save the oceans. Many specific recommendations were made to control pollution but the general conclusion of the workshop was:

We do not present any prophecy of impending doom, even though such prophesies have become extremely popular in this age of intense concern about environmental quality. We do recognize the present degraded state of the coastal zone ecosystem over large areas, but we also recognize that even larger areas are still in natural condition. We have recommended preservation of some of these unmodified areas, and this will require changes in our present activities. Unregulated continuation of present activities will lead to insidious spread of degradation, and controls and modification of man’s actions will be necessary to preserve the essential characteristics of the coastal zone. It is necessary to reconcile conflicting demands on coastal resources in such a way that full use of these resources is realized without destruction of natural processes required to renew them.

The workshop gave me a new perspective on the coastal zone, and the fact that consensus documents had to skirt the real issues, meaning that issues are watered down by competing interests. My first encounters with the open ocean were on research cruises. The RV Knorr was WHOI’s brand new eighty five meter, research vessel. One of the first cruises of the International Decade of Ocean Exploration (IDOE) was scheduled in March 1971. The science team was ten graduate students with two young scientists to supervise (Ken Smith and Gill Rowe). The ship headed out into a gale in the North Atlantic. For three days it was so rough that most of the students, and some of the crew, were sick. The science cabins were relatively large on the new ship. I got tossed off the top bunk and slid back and forth across the floor until I could grab the steel framework and haul my bruised body back up. There were great crashes of steel pots that flew off the stove in the galley, and after that the cook served cold food to anyone who could eat. When the girls crawled into the head all the hand grabs were above their heads; the ship was not designed for women. Most came good after a day or two and started working. One student was so sick that after four days Ken and Gill carried her up the ladders to the deck in a large green plastic garbage bin. She was better in the sun and wind where she could see the horizon.

Ken and Gill deployed Howard Sanders’ big anchor dredge that skimmed off the top 10 to 20 cm of sediments. The mud was dumped into a wide plastic bin on the back deck. My job was to sample sediments into glass jars for organic analysis and then to sieve for animals. Charlene D’Avanzo and I had to put about a tonne of sediment through 1 cm mesh sieves. We sieved sediments as the ship steamed at fifteen to twenty knots to the next station. It was cold messy work, despite wet weather jackets and pants. Charlene and I grumbled and wondered why none of the male students had turns at this task. At one site, we dredged up a whole bucket full of manganese nodules; rough metal ball-shaped things. These were a novelty and no one knew how they had formed. They were on the sea bed surface, as they were not found in deep sediment cores. All the samples were brought back to WHOI. Marine ecologist, Howard Sanders, took the benthic animals; the organic geochemists got the sediments. The bucketful of now dry manganese nodules was poured into a cardboard box that sat in the hallway at WHOI’s Redfield building for years. Two students did their PhDs on the chemistry and microbiological formation of manganese nodules. This had been my first encounter with the open ocean and was another catalyst for my passion to save the oceans from the insults of coastal pollution.

John Teal had the RV Atlantis II and most of NOAA’s coastal radar stations collaborating to detect the great autumn bird migration in September. The radars could distinguish between little and large birds. The ship sailed in mid-September when there was a hurricane forming further south. It was cloudy and dark at night; the ship was a beacon of light and one evening thousands of tiny birds descended on it. They settled on all the antenna masts, the deck and other surfaces. Some stayed in the air above the ship. Their chirping rang loud. The birds stayed until the clouds parted enough for them to get a directional fix from the stars; they flew off en-mass to the break in the clouds. NOAA radioed the ship asking if it would go into the hurricane to take sea and atmosphere measurements, but our captain refused because of the danger. The ship would head as far south as was safe and then head north again as the storm pushed on. Days were spent dip netting for Sargassum weed and its associated community of animals. The weed floated in patches and was colonized by Sargassum fish, pipe fish, and several species of shrimps and crabs, all endemic to this little floating weed habitat, and coloured to blend in. Plus there was a myriad of attached bryozoans and microbes. Another scientist, Ed Carpenter, dragged plankton nets which came up with an abundance of plankton, plastic bits and tar balls. Ed quantified the plastic bits and I counted the tar balls as estimates of pollution. I published a science paper about the respiration rate of the Sargassum community in collaboration with Ken Smith⁴ and a second about hydrocarbons in the community⁵. John and Mildred Teal published a popular book called ‘The Sargasso Sea’.⁶ My love of the sea and the ecosystems it supports grew.

Sargassum fish, Histrio, in a clump of Sargassum weed.

The round gas-filled floats keep the algae on the sea surface.

(Photo by K. Burns)

~~~~~~~

Life was not all science but was mostly related to the sea. Walter Hatch, a graduate student friend, and Robbie decided to build a twenty five foot trimeran sailboat so we could do coastal cruising around Cape Cod. Walter was 5 ft 8 in tall, blond with beard and moustache, slightly overweight. He had a happy go lucky attitude and used to bumble along with great enthusiasm. Robbie, about 5 ft 4 in was thin but muscular. He had brown hair, bleached blond by the sun, and sported a moustache. Robbie had more practical skills than Walter and would grumble when he had to fix the other’s mistakes. Working mostly on weekends, they built the three hulls in Frank Carey’s shed. The hulls were made of light framework wood covered with marine plywood and then fibreglass. The hulls were hauled out of the shed so the cross beams could be installed. Twice we had to turn the trimeran over; once to add another layer of fibreglass to the bottom and the second time to stand it upright for work on the deck and rigging. Frank made a big derrick out of trees that he cut from his little forest, added blocks and tackle and sturdy ropes. Graduate student friends were invited over for boat turning parties. Lunch was served on Frank’s house veranda. With all that young labour assembled, Frank decided to also have them help move a heavy old wooden tool shed building to the planned chicken yard to turn into a hen house.

Burns and Hatches christened the trimeran Cygnus after the local white swans. Elaine Hatch was a small trim woman, a nurse in the emergency department of the hospital. I liked Elaine because she provided a serious, competent, counter balance to Walter’s flippancy. Hatches shared sailing the boat. Cygnus was one of the few sailboats that could sail through Woods Hole against the tide. Robbie and I sailed it to Provincetown Harbour over a Labour Day weekend. The route was from Buzzards Bay through the Cape Cod Canal into the Atlantic. We had no radio and were surprised to find the whole town was preparing for the direct hit of a hurricane with the eye expected to pass over Sunday evening! Two anchors set fore and aft were to keep the boat lined up in the direction of the expected winds.

Saturday afternoon started the harrowing experience of continuously watching if the anchors were dragging and hoping the hatches would not blow off. The sky turned black, the noise of the wind in the rigging sounding like freight trains, and waves pounding against the hulls were frightening. Kurt Vonnegut’s novel about ‘Ice Nine’, read by torchlight and shouted out loud, passed the daylight time. The only thing visible out the port hole was a large white sailboat against which the movement of the trimeran was anxiously gauged. The eye of the storm passed over Sunday afternoon creating an ominous silence. An old man rowed out to a fishing skiff moored near Cygnus. He calmly bailed the boat and rowed back to shore. Immediately the wind turned the other direction with equal vengeance all through the pitch black night. At sunrise Monday morning, the cyclone had passed and we opened the hatch to see the white yacht wrecked on the rocky breakwater. We counted our blessings as we picked up our anchors.

Starting back to Woods Hole that morning after the storm, it was still blowing hard enough to have to roll the main sail up to near handkerchief size. The sea was rough and during the trip a hatch cover on an outside float washed overboard. I hung out between