Part I: Seals teeth and whales ears - Scott Polar Research Institute ...

Because of the Navy's great interest the Admiralty assumed a leading
responsibility for the new Institute and the initial Chairman of the Council was the
Chief of the Royal Naval Scientific Service. A Director (Dr G E R Deacon FRS) and
Secretary of the new Institute were appointed. The two ships, RRS Discovery II and
the RRS William Scoresby, were purchased by the Admiralty from the Falkland
Islands Dependencies Government and presented to the Institute. The remaining
scientific staff of Discovery Investigations, headed by Dr N A Mackintosh, were
taken over by the NIO, and other existing groups of physical oceanographers were
added.
Thus, the origins of the physical and biological groups within the institute
were separate and from the beginning there were tensions, not least between
Mackintosh and Deacon (who had also served with Discovery Investigations).
Possibly their antipathy had its roots in the past. The biological work at that time
was mainly concerned with whale biology (the original raison d' etre of Discovery
Investigations), associated studies on krill, (Euphausia superba, a shoaling
crustacean 6-7 cm long, the staple food of whales, and many seals, birds and fish,
in the Antarctic) and other zooplankton. The Discovery Investigations had borne
various responsibilities for the care and curation of collections, which passed on to
the NIO. (The extensive Discovery Collections were housed in ‘the hut’ at the
Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, where I had worked briefly on my
return from the Balaena voyage). Publication of the Discovery Reports by
Cambridge University Press continued under the editorial eye of Dr Mackintosh.
At the same time by arrangement with the Colonial Office, the new Institute
assumed responsibility for the data and collections accumulated by FIDS, pending
the establishment of a Scientific Bureau for these purposes in London. This was a
continuing link to my earlier interests. In fact, although I had submitted a
dissertation and been awarded a PhD by the University of Cambridge, I still had
to write up and publish much of my work on the southern elephant seal. In the
early years of our marriage I spent many of my evenings at home completing two
more scientific monographs on the southern elephant seal, which were published
in the Falkland Islands Scientific Reports Series in l956. (These reports were on the
social and reproductive behaviour of the species and on the physiology of
reproduction. They remain key references to the biology of the species). I also
published my management studies, which had led in l952 to a sustainable
industry. But this did take up a lot of my spare time, which was not fair to
Maureen who was very good about my dedication to this task, to the detriment of
other more social activities. The Scientific Bureau was set up in l955 (?) by Sir
Raymond Priestley, an eminent Antarctic geologist who had been with Scott and
Shackleton in the heroic era of Antarctic exploration and was later Vice-Chancellor
of the University of Birmingham and of the University of the West Indies. I
enjoyed my contacts with this great man then and later. I was also very
appreciative of the help I had from Evelyn (known to all as "Anne" – after the film
star) Todd who had the burden of editing and production of the series. But
publication was delayed.
When I joined the NIO in l954 I was one of only five Senior Scientific Officers -
physicists and biologists - in a scientific and technical staff then numbering only
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