Newsletter No. 13, SPRING 1996

Newsletter Editor, Designer, and HTML Author: Laura Young
Department of Oceanography Chair, Dr. David Thistle


IN THIS ISSUE:


View from the Bridge

The chair's column

Iverson develops algorithm for satellite data

Feature article

Student Spotlight

Fisher award winner, travel award winner, outstanding students, science fair judges

On Staff

Welcomes and farewells, Promotions

Harkema gets results with patience, physics, and a well-used PC

Feature article

Project Reports:

In the field photo feature

Findings

Professional Activities: Honors, presentations and service

Alumni Updates, Degrees Conferred

~Links to Previous Issues~



Iverson develops algorithm for satellite data

by Laura Young

In 1992, when NASA issued a call for research using the Sea-viewing Wide-field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS), Dr. Richard Iverson had a winning proposal. He was selected as a SeaWiFS Science Team member for NASA's Mission to Planet Earth, with four years of funding.


Iverson aboard the Privateer off Bob Sikes
Cut in Apalachicola Bay

He was interested in determining how to use satellite ocean-color data to calculate phytoplankton growth in different regions of the ocean. Over the past three years, he has developed empirical equations to apply to data from satellite images. The starting point was remotely-sensed data from the Coastal Zone Color Scanner (CZCS), which orbited the Earth aboard the Nimbus-7 Satellite.

Eyes in the sky

Satellites have dramatically extended our ability to observe the Earth's oceans. Ship-based research allows scientists to study relatively small portions of the global ocean at a time. Satellites circling the Earth can survey the entire ocean in a day! They can measure sea-surface temperature, wave heights, wave directions-and color. When astronauts look at the ocean from space, they see different shades of blue. Orbiting satellites can carry instruments that are more sensitive than the human eye, such as the CZCS and SeaWiFS sensors, to measure a dazzling array of ocean colors.

CZCS color data has been interpreted to reveal the presence and concentration of phytoplankton in the ocean. Information about these organisms, which form the foundation of the food chain, can be useful in determining the health and chemistry of the entire ocean.

Iverson proposed to go one step further-to use the color data to calculate where phytoplankton were most productive.

When phytoplankton photosynthesis produces biomass, the process changes the color of the ocean, even to the naked eye. Very productive water with a high concentration of plankton appears blue-green. Unproductive water appears a deep blue-black. From space, a satellite-mounted spectrometer precisely measures the amounts of reflected light of different wavelengths, which we see as colors.

Iverson and his colleague at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Wayne Esaiahs, discovered a mathematical algorithm that correlates chlorophyll concentrations, as determined from satellite ocean-color data, with different levels of phytoplankton productivity.

Their productivity calculations also reveal the amount of carbon dioxide that phytoplankton are removing from sea water to build cells as they grow, and the amount of organic carbon in dead phytoplankton that drop to the ocean floor in fecal pellets.

In search of the missing sink

When SeaWiFS is launched from a Pegasus rocket, hopefully next year, it will obtain measurements more frequently than its predecessor, CZCS. Iverson then will apply his algorithms to a time-series of new ocean-color data to determine the importance of phytoplankton's use of carbon in the carbon cycle of the entire planet.

In recent years, scientists have become increasingly interested in determining all the components of the global carbon cycle. Since the industrial revolution, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have increased significantly. The accumulation of carbon dioxide in both the atmosphere and the ocean matches the estimated emissions until about 1920. After this time there is an increasing gap between the two, suggesting that either the emission estimates are much too high or there is a 'sink' not accounted for in the balance.

"We know how much carbon from wood and coal combustion enters the atmosphere. We can account for the carbon exchanged between the ocean inorganic pool and the atmosphere," says Iverson. "We can estimate the carbon going from the atmosphere to plants and soil on land."

And yet, not all the carbon up-take is accounted for. Iverson and Esaiahs will use their algorithm to calculate the contribution of the ocean biological process to the global carbon cycle, which may reveal the location of the missing sink.

Tackling difficult science

How does his SeaWiFS work compare with his work on the important and politically hot issue of the Apalachicola River water-diversion? One might expect that doing science in a politically tense climate would be especially difficult, but Iverson denies it.

"That's not difficult. It's straight data collection and analysis. We found what we expected to find. If you reduce the amount of water coming into the Apalachicola Bay, you're going to lower the amount of nutrients, and that is the basis of productivity for the primary food chain.

"The difficulty with that issue lies at the political level. We only provide facts that will be used by decision makers. In contrast, difficult scientific problems, like creating new models and algorithms, involve working past what is known."

Iverson first became interested in oceanography after taking limnology courses at the Iowa Lakeside Laboratory at Lake Okaboji during his junior year at Iowa State University. He obtained an undergraduate research participant scholarship to work in aquatic ecology at Oak Ridge National Laboratory before his senior year and was accepted at Oregon State University upon graduation. He received his Ph.D. there in 1972.

Remarkably, Iverson has been working in the same room for the twenty-four years since he earned his Ph.D. He joined the faculty at FSU in 1972, was promoted to Associate Professor in 1977 and to Professor of Oceanography in 1983.

"Although it looks like I have the same job," he says, "I don't. The projects change, and new students come and graduate. It's a continually refreshing profession."

NASA's World Wide Web site offers a picture of the SeaWiFS instrument and more information about the overall project. http://pao.gsfc/images/earth/sentinel/instruments/seawifs.gif and http://pao.gsfc/service/gallery/fact_sheets/earthsci/seawifs.htm

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Student spotlight


Fisher award goes to Cherrier

Jennifer Cherrier is the 1996 winner of the 18th Annual Graduate Student James R. Fisher Award! At the seminar competition for the four finalists, Jennifer presented her paper "Utilization and turnover of labile dissolved organic matter by bacterial heterotrophs in eastern North Pacific surface waters." Jennifer receives $300 and membership in the FSU Chapter of the Society of Sigma Xi.

The James R. Fisher Award Competition is held yearly at FSU and is designed to encourage the publication of original investigations by graduate students in anthropology, biological sciences, computer science, earth sciences (geology, meteorology, oceanography), engineering, mathematics, nutritional sciences, philosophy of science, physical sciences, psychology, and statistics.

This year 24 graduate students submitted papers for the competition. Jennifer's winning paper is soon to be published in Marine Ecology Progress Series. Last year she also published an article: Cherrier, J., W. C. Burnett, and P. A. LaRock (1995) "Uptake of polonium and sulfur by bacteria," Geomicrobiology Journal, 13: 103­p;115. Jennifer expects to receive her Ph.D. in Biological Oceanography this summer.

Lia Stalder won this year's Student Travel Award. She received $100 from the Thalassic Society, and the department paid for her ticket to the AGU/ASLO Ocean Sciences Meeting in San Diego, where she presented the poster "Biological responses to hypoxia and anoxia in the marine environment: survival and behavioral avoidance patterns of three species of calanoid copepods."
The Department of Oceanography recognized the following Outstanding Students for 1996: Jennifer Cherrier, Bin Li, Rodney Powell, and Jaye Young. Each student received $50 and an invitation to membership in the FSU Chapter of the Society of Sigma Xi.
Serving as judges in the 1996 Capital Regional Science and Engineering Fair were Ph.D. candidates Glynnis Bugna, Jennifer Cherrier, and Stephanie Smith. Students in the fair, as well as members of the community and parents who attended the fair, were impressed by those who took time to help potential young scientists learn to carry out and present experiments and projects.

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On staff

Stephenie Brimm was promoted from Secretary to Senior Secretary in January. Congratulations, Stephenie!

Best wishes to Dr. Burnett's Lab Manager, Pete Cable, and Dr. Jaye Young ('96), who were married on April 27 at Christ Episcopal Church in Monticello, Florida.

Harkema gets results with patience, physics, and a well-used PC

by Laura Young

Take millions of incomprehensible blips recorded on cassette tapes undersea, put them into the hands of Reinard Harkema, and what do you get? Meaningful graphics whose swirls, lines, bars, and points have provided the first step for researchers' interpretation of data for over 16 years.

According to Reinard, the proverb "a picture is worth a thousand words" is especially true in the field of physical oceanography. He uses FORTRAN programming, statistics, and a lot of patience to transform those blips from the department's current meters.

"I feel very fortunate," says Reinard, "that the current-meter staff put out a lot of good data. A large percentage of my time is spent creating graphics from that data. People see me walking around with an oceanography t-shirt on, and they ask me, 'Oh, do you dive?' 'No,' I say, 'I sit behind a computer all day.'"

Dr. Georges Weatherly, director of the Current-Meter Facility, appreciates Reinard's ability to consistently produce the required data analysis, and he admires his "willingness to learn new data-analysis techniques, even if this means taking a graduate-level course." He says that Reinard is willing to tackle rather unusual data sets and has developed a valuable instinct for identifying suspicious data values.

Harkema

"I was not trained in oceanography in any way," says Reinard, "and I think Georges likes it that way because I don't have any preconceived notions. I analyze the data, but I let someone else interpret it. That way I always have an open mind."

Though not an oceanographer, Reinard came to the department with a solid background in physics. After receiving his undergraduate degree in physics at UNC-Chapel Hill, he completed a Master's degree and additional graduate coursework in physics at FSU. He was teaching physics part-time at Tallahassee Community College while working part-time for Dr. Weatherly, beginning in 1977. In 1980, Reinard took a full-time position with the department and currently holds the title Computer Research Specialist, an administrative/professional-level position.

Reinard recalls that when he first started working here, he did nearly all his computer work using a mainframe, but now he can do everything from programming to creating graphics to publishing the final data reports using a PC.

"I have more power sitting on my desktop now than I did back when I used a mainframe," he says. "The environment makes it easier, and the output looks a lot better than it used to, but basically, the mathematics doesn't change."

In addition to his work in programming and graphics, Reinard says he is the unofficial librarian for department copies of PC Magazine, and he serves as the "archivist of all the [current-meter] data we've accumulated." Dr. Weatherly notes that Reinard also has "a knack for resurrecting ancient, but needed data-analysis programs."

Reinard and his wife Cheri married in 1981. They are active in the Church of the Holy Spirit Episcopal and enjoy gardening and tennis. His most daunting off-the-job project at the moment is getting their mountain retreat home built in north Georgia. He says the view is spectacular, although he's not sure how many basements they're going to have to add (two and counting) down the steep slope before they'll be able to enjoy the sights from the deck. Reinard seems to be as patient about the building of the mountain home as he is about computer programming.

"If you try to push too fast," he says, "you'll pay for it later."

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In the field

Fire and ice: measuring methane in extremes

(left) Dr. Jeffrey Chanton spent five days during early March in Alberta, Canada, in ­p;16°C weather to measure methane and carbon dioxide fluxes in winter. Sampling equipment had to be tranported via snowmobile and sled. Chanton collected smoky air during the controlled burn of a longleaf pine forest (right) in February at the Jones Research Center in Newton, Georgia. His analysis of the methane in these emissions is part of a program to develop "chemical fingerprints" for particular sources of anthropogenic methane emissions (such as coal mining, landfills, biomass burning, and wastewater treatment). The results should provide a basis for planning a national strategy for mitigation of greenhouse gas sources.


Learning the ropes

Students taking the course Geological Oceanography/Marine Geology boarded the Suncoaster for a training cruise in the Gulf of Mexico off Carabelle in April. Master's candidate Roger Wong (center) and two undergraduate students prepare a water sampler.


And more ice...

FSU crew members were met with ice-covered equipment (above) when they boarded the Oceanus at Woods Hole this February to deploy current-meter moorings off Cape Hatteras as part of Dr. Georges Weatherly's Department of Energy project.


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Published findings

  • Burnett, W. C., and C.-C. Yeh. 1995. Separation of protactinium from geochemical materials via extraction chromatography. Radioactivity & Radiochemistry, 6, 20­p;28.
    • Abstract: Separation of U, Th, and Pa from environmental samples (shells, minerals, etc.) is often required by geochemists for geochronological and other applications. This work describes an efficient and relatively rapid method for separation of these elements from marine phosphate minerals and sediments. The main separation is accomplished via an extraction chromatographic column with a final cleanup using standard ion exchange resin. There is thus no need to employ waste-generating solvent extractions which are commonly used for Pa separations. Because of the low natural abundance of 231Pa, we conducted several tests to optimize its recovery. We also took steps to ensure minimum contamination of the Pa source by U or Th nuclides which could cause significant spectral interferences. Samples analyzed using this method show typical Pa yields of about 90% and U/Th contamination of less than 0.02% of the combined U/Th activity.
    Abstract: Eastward wind stress, averaged along the equator from one side of the Pacific to the other, is the key meteorological quantity for estimating long-term El Niño behavior in the eastern Pacific. However, the long-term behavior of this meteorological variable is difficult to determine directly both because too few data have been taken in the past and because these false trends have been introduced by historical changes in the way winds have been measured. For example, the eastern equatorial Pacific wind record suggests that the equatorial trade winds have increased substantially in strength over the last 20 years, and yet the sea-surface temperature measurements in the eastern equatorial Pacific suggest that the winds have actually weakened considerably. This work shows that the equatorially averaged wind stress can be estimated from the difference in surface atmospheric pressure at each end of the equatorial Pacific. Only two atmospheric pressure measurements are thus needed in comparatively data-rich regions near the coasts. Further, since atmospheric pressure measurements have always been made in essentially the same way, false data trends are avoided. These results confirm that the equatorial trade winds have weakened rather than strengthened since the early 1970s. They also show that there have been decadal changes in these winds since the 1920s. A proxy record of eastern equatorial Pacific sea-surface temperature from Galapagos coral suggests that such long-term weakening and strengthening of the Pacific equatorial trades has occurred before major anthropogenic greenhouse gas release and at least back to 1600 a.d.
  • Cutter, G. A., W. M. Landing, C. T. Measures, and P. A. Yeats. 1996. The IOC baseline survey for trace contaminants in the Atlantic Ocean. EOS, Vol. 77, No. 2, 9­p;13.
    • Abstract: Scientists from five nations measured the concentrations and distributions of more than 18 trace metals in both deep and surface waters of the Atlantic Ocean during two international sampling efforts. The measurements are valuable for monitoring elemental concentrations and also have the power to reveal biogeochemical processes that affect trace metals. This information is critically important for predicting the fate of any potential contaminant in the marine environment. Preliminary results from the two surveys show that the major water masses in the Atlantic have characteristic trace metal signatures and that the simultaneous use of multiple tracers to unravel geochemical questions is quite promising. This baseline already has been used to show a decrease in anthropogenic lead concentrations, presumably due to the removal of lead additives in gasoline. Surprisingly, overall there were minimal anthropogenic effects detected by the two studies. The first survey, conducted in the eastern Atlantic Ocean in 1990, showed that atmospheric deposition greatly affects the biogeochemical cycling of several trace metals (e.g., aluminum, iron, mercury, and antimony), and that physical forcing (deep-water circulation, upwelling) strongly influences the concentrations and distributions of trace metals. In the case of aluminum, the data clearly show that waters in the Intertropical Convergence Zone receive this metal when rainfall transfers aerosols from the atmosphere to the ocean. The second cruise, in 1993, expanded the trace metal list and was the first basin-wide survey ever to apply the baseline approach to both inorganic and organic compounds. Data from the high-latitude North Atlantic confirms that the water in this region is relatively young, which results in little in situ modification of the original surface-water concentrations of trace metals.
  • Miller, D. and J. J. O'Brien. 1995. Shallow water waves on the rotating sphere. Physical Review E., Vol. 51, No. 5, 4418­p;4431.
  • Shriver, J. F., and J. J. O'Brien. 1995. Low frequency variability of the equatorial Pacific Ocean using a new pseudo-stress data set: 1930­p;1989. Journal of Climate, Vol. 8, No. 11.
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    Honors

    Professor Melvin E. Stern has been named a Distinguished Research Professor by Florida State University. The title and a one-time award of $3,000 were presented at the Faculty Awards Ceremony on April 8.


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    Presentations and service

    The department was well represented at the AGU/ASLO Ocean Sciences Meeting in San Diego, California, February 1996, with presentations by the following faculty and students: Dr. Bill Burnett presented the paper "Problems and possible remedies concerning NORM in by-product gypsum produced by the phosphate industry" at the Health Physics Society Midyear Meeting in Scottsdale, Arizona, January 7­p;10. Last November 28­p;30 he spoke on "Radionuclide speciation-the key to transport and fate?" at the 4th Annual Meeting of the Council on Ionizing Radiation & Standards (CIRMS) in Washington, D.C. Last October 9, Burnett presented "Tracing groundwater flow into the ocean using Rn-222" at the Chemistry Division Seminar Series, Argonne National Laboratory.
    Dr. Jeffrey Chanton spoke on "The effect of clear cutting on soil organic carbon storage" at the Alberta Sustainable Forestry Conference, March 1­p;11.
    Dr. Allan J. Clarke presented the paper "A biennial air-sea interaction instability in the western Pacific" (co-authors Xiang Liu and Steve Van Gorder) at the American Meteorological Society 76th Annual Meeting, Symposium on the Global Ocean-Atmosphere-Land System (GOALS), held in Atlanta, February 1. Clarke was invited to chair the session "El Niño/Southern Oscillation" at GOALS. Clark also presented the paper "Remotely driven decadal and longer changes in the California Current" (co-author Anna Lebedev ('96)) at the American Geophysical Union 1995 Fall Meeting in San Francisco last December.
    Ph.D. candidate Steve Ertman presented the paper "Potential mates of benthic harpacticoids: does suspension during winter storms increase encounter rate?" on March 7 at the 24th Annual Benthic Ecology Meeting in Columbia, South Carolina.
    Post-doctoral Research Associate Carter Hull presented the paper "U-238 decay-series nuclides in fluids within a Florida phosphogypsum storage stack" at the Health Physics Society Midyear Meeting in Scottsdale, Arizona, January 7­p;10.
    In January, Dr. William Landing spoke on "Atmospheric deposition and aquatic cycling of mercury" for the Valdosta State University Department of Chemistry Lecture Series. In February, he presented a "Review of the Florida Atmospheric Mercury Study" at the Mercury in the Environment '96, Southeastern United States Mercury Conference, in Miami and spoke to FSU's Alpha Chi Sigma about "Environmental and marine chemistry."
    The Bodega Bay Laboratory in California invited Dr. Nancy Marcus to give a seminar last December on "Ecological and evolutionary significance of dormancy in marine copepods." Also in December, Marcus was an invited participant and facilitator of the geosciences/polar programs workshop at the Women and Science Conference: Celebrating Achievements and Charting Challenges, sponsored by the National Science Foundation.
    Dr. James J. O'Brien presented an invited lecture to the Japanese Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications in Tokyo on February 20 entitled "A new paradigm of ocean variability discovered by satellites and ocean models." While in Japan, he was invited to present additional lectures at the University of Tokyo and the Japanese Meteorological Agency.
    At the Fourth Symposium on Biogeochemistry of Wetlands, held March 4­p;6 in New Orleans, Ph.D. candidate Joanne Edwards presented the paper "Determination of methane oxidation via the methyl fluoride technique"; and Research Assistant Trevor J. Popp presented a poster entitled "Rhizospheric methane oxidation in a Carex dominated boreal fen."
    Dr. Lita Proctor was invited to present a seminar in FSU's Biology Colloquium Series in April entitled "The microbial ecology of marine copepods: a new source of carbon and nitrogen to the oceans?"
    Dr. David Thistle was invited to give the LEQSF Distinguished Seminar in Biological Science at the Department of Zoology and Physiology, Louisiana State University, in March. His talk was entitled "What are the consequences of winter storms for small animals living on the temperate continental shelf?" Also in March, Thistle spoke at the Benthic Ecology Meetings in Columbia, South Carolina, on "The meiofauna of two physically disturbed soft-bottom sites on a seamount." In April, Thistle gave an invited seminar in natural history at the FSU Department of Biological Sciences entitled "What to do when the world blows away: consequences of storms for small invertebrates living on the continental shelf."

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    Alumni news

    If you've visited the amazing Smithsonian Ocean Planet Exhibition in person or via NASA's World Wide Web site, then you have seen the mindwork of Susan Boa ('93). The traveling exhibit left Washington April 30 and will be at the Presidio in San Francisco this summer. For a virtual visit, go to http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/ocean_planet.html. Susan left FSU's Department of Oceanography to work on this exhibit's development then joined the staff of the Oceanographer of the Navy, a two-star admiral responsible for the Navy's operational oceanography program. Last October, she began working at the International Global Change Research Programs office of the National Science Foundation. Susan has become involved in the Women's Aquatic Network in the Washington, D.C. area and the Marine Technology Society.

    Congratulations to Kevin Carman ('89) for receiving the Faculty Research Award at a recent Basic Sciences Convocation at Louisiana State University, where he is an assistant professor of zoology. The $1,000 award and a plaque are given to an untenured faculty member for excellence in research. Kevin was nominated by his department and chosen from a pool of candidates from six other departments.

    James Schornick ('71) visited FSU this winter with his son, Jeffrey, 18, a National Merit Scholar who is being recruited by the University. James has enjoyed a 23-year career at the U. S. Geological Survey. He first became involved with the USGS as a student of oceanography and then took a position as a water-quality specialist at the New Jersey district office. He now works as a hydrologist in the national office. During his tenure with the USGS, he ran the national water-quality accounting program and more recently has been involved in developing an innovative database concept for the plethora of information collected and maintained by the USGS. James and his wife, Judy, are considering moving back to Florida upon retirement.


    Degrees conferred

    Feng Chen (M.S. 4/96, Marcus)

    "Eggs of planktonic copepods from the northern Gulf of Mexico: morphology, hatching success and abundance in the sea bed." Feng has been readmitted to the doctoral program.

    JiMeng Fu (Ph.D. 4/96, Winchester)

    "Atmospheric nitrate deposition: a large nutrient source in north Florida watersheds." JiMeng is employed at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

    Anna Lebedev (M.S. 4/96, Clarke)

    "Long term changes in the equatorial zonal wind stress." Anna is working for Dr. Matthias Tomczak at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia.

    Ivan Lebedev (Ph.D. 12/95, Nof)

    "The migrating confluence zone." Ivan has begun a post-doctoral appointment with Dr. Matthias Tomczak at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia.

    Sylvia Murphy (M.S. 4/96, O'Brien)

    "The connectivity of mesoscale variability in the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic Ocean"

    Jay Muza (Ph.D. 4/96, Wise)

    "Neogene calcareous nannofossils from the Japan Sea and Mid Latitude Western North Atlantic Continential Rise"

    Rodney Powell (Ph.D. 12/95, Landing)

    "Iron: oceanic and estuarine distributions and size fractionation." Rodney has begun a post-doctoral appointment in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Old Dominion University, working with Dr. John Donat on electrochemical measurements of iron speciation in natural colloidal material from oceanic, estuarine, and fresh waters. He will be participating with Profs. Landing and Donat on the 1996 Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) expedition, May 11­p;June 23, looking at colloidal iron in the open ocean and how it is affected by atmospheric dust input.

    Lia Stalder (M.S. 4/96, Marcus)

    "Biological responses to hypoxia and anoxia in the marine environment: survival and behavioral response patterns of three species of calanoid copepods." Lia has been readmitted to the doctoral program.

    Ramkumar Venkataraman (M.S. 12/95, Krishnamurti)

    "A mechanism for ocean mixed layer deepening: a laboratory model"

    Jaye Young (Ph.D. 4/96, Burnett)

    "Tracing groundwater flow into the northeastern Gulf of Mexico using naturally occurring Radon-222." Jaye has begun a post-doctoral appointment with Dr. Claire Shelski at the Department of Aquatic Sciences, University of Florida.

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    View from the bridge

    Once again, it has been an interesting six months. Melvin Stern was designated a Distinguished Research Professor, one of the highest honors in the university. Graduate student Jennifer Cherrier won the student-paper competition sponsored by the FSU Chapter of the Society of the Sigma Xi.
    This spring, the biological oceanographers began a fund-raising effort. When Winston Menzel died, a fund was established in his memory to provide small travel and research grants to students in biological oceanography. It benefited from gifts at the time of his death and the revenues from his last book. The fund balance stuck about $1,200 short of the $10,000 required for an interest-earning account. An appeal to Winston's friends and students has resulted in a welcome response. We are nearly there; the fund needs only about $100 more. To those of you who have already given, thanks very much.
    On another front, over the years, storage has been a big problem for the department. We are a largely sea-going group, and some impressive piles of oceanographic equipment are stuffed into every cranny of the building. When Georges Weatherly received a grant that involved doubling the amount of equipment in the Current-Meter Facility, we knew that the problem had become serious. After about a year of inquiry and false starts, Georges found that the department could build a warehouse at the FSU Farm of the size we needed (4,000 sq. ft.) if we could just raise $155,000. Georges put up $10,000. The department took a careful look at its budget and pledged one third of the remaining amount. The College of Arts and Sciences and the Division of Research each matched the department's contribution, so we have the money! Plans are being drawn up by the Warehouse Building Committee. In about 10 months, we will finally solve a storage problem that has been with us for a very long time.

    David Thistle, Chair


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