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

y insurance assessors, were new to work on wild animal populations, which was
mainly directed to short-lived small mammals. Even into the 1960s computers were
not in general use in field biology and application of statistics was quite primitive. In
the span of my career scientific knowledge has grown more than in the total previous
history of our species.
The adventures too were physically satisfying and exciting as well as adventures
of the mind, making new discoveries in various fields of biology. My interests and
activities have been diverse, covering most elements of the spectrum from basic
biological studies, from microbes and the biology of cells, to great whales and mega
herbivores, to comprehensive ecosystem studies – to conservation and management.
My PhD thesis was concerned with the reproduction of the southern elephant seal,
which included the histology (at the cellular level) of its tissues; physiology and
anatomy of the body; the animal’s growth and age; its behaviour and population
dynamics. Not all this work could be included in my thesis and much was developed
and published separately over a decade. I drew up a management plan for the
exploited population at South Georgia when I discovered that it was declining due to
over-hunting and predicted (correctly) that if my proposals were adopted the system
would achieve sustainability and could be monitored using techniques I had
developed. I have also published on the world’s most abundant seal, the crabeater
seal, living in the vast expanses of the southern pack ice zone. All this was new.
At the beginning of my career I had to build my own Antarctic laboratory with
timbers from a derelict Norwegian whaling station. When working on whale biology
I had to convert an old lavatory building into my rough/wet laboratory – it had good
drainage! In Africa in the 1960s I started up two research stations, one in Uganda,
the other in Kenya, building laboratories and attracted substantial funding to the
work. The former later became the Uganda Institute of Ecology. Later the staff of the
British Antarctic Survey (BAS), widely dispersed throughout the UK, were brought
together at Cambridge in purpose-built laboratories, offices and a workshop
complex. Buildings and facilities had more than doubled by the time of my
retirement. And later in my career there were other adventures involving solving
logistic problems, on land and at sea. As director of a large multidisciplinary research
institute, I needed to understand the basics of a whole range of environmental
sciences from the smallest micro-organisms to the largest mammals, fish and birds. I
had to have a grasp of work being undertaken in geology and geophysics, in
palaeontology, glaciology, atmospheric physics, medical research, marine and
freshwater biology, botany. I was director when BAS scientists discovered the
‘Ozone Hole’, an extremely important finding that more than justified the whole
expenditure on our science programmes. Our activities extended into Space
Research. I became involved in the planning and execution of very successful
international research programmes. As Director of BAS I was responsible for some
400 staff, both scientific and support, for two research ships and their crews, for an
air unit of several aircraft working in the Antarctic, for five Antarctic bases (including
re-supply, regular maintenance and construction work). We had to provide medical
and dental facilities and were responsible for people’s safety in rigorous conditions.
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