NF-POGO Centre of Excellence Year 2 Report

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Appendix 5. Commencement Speech Given at NF-POGO CofE Graduation Ceremony year 2.Address to the POGOnian Scholars on the Occasion of their Graduation from the NipponFoundation-Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans Centre of Excellence Program at theBermuda Institute of Ocean SciencesMay 21, 2010byFred T. MackenzieProfessor EmeritusDepartment of OceanographySchool of Ocean and Earth Sciences and TechnologyUniversity of HawaiiLadies and Gentlemen, Honorable Elwin James, Board Members, Dr. Knap, Dr. Plumley, thePOGO faculty of Andreas Andersson, Mike Lomas, Rob Condon, Nick Bates, Kristen Buck,Jerome Aucan, and Simon Ussher, staff, and especially the POGOnian scholars. Aloha to you allfrom Hawaii. It is an honor and a privilege to stand before you this evening—the second graduatingclass of the Nippon Foundation-Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans Centre ofExcellence program at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences. I have been a scientist all my lifeand it has been an exciting and rewarding ride. What I would first like to talk to you about thisevening are three lessons that I have learned along my ride through my scientific career and life. Asthe great New York Yankee catcher and baseball manager Yogi Berra once said: ―You can see a lotby just listening‖ or maybe it was ―You can hear a lot just by watching‖. Whatever way Yogi meantit, I have done a lot of listening and watching and I would like to share with you some thoughts thatmight be relevant advice to you POGOnians on this graduation day.Lesson # 1 is simply to expand your scientific horizons. I started science as a physicist witha minor in geology. This was fortunate because it taught me early on that observations were only apart of scientific investigation and one needed a sound foundation in mathematics, fundamentalscience, and Earth science in general within which the observations could be quantified andmodeled. After finishing my Ph.D. in geochemistry in 1962, I took a job with Shell Oil Company asa research and exploration geologist. Shell was far ahead of academe at that time in studies ofsedimentary processes and I received an excellent hands-on education in this field. Shortlythereafter I came to this institute, then known as the Bermuda Biological Station for Research, andbegan to spread my wings as an oceanographer, helping to maintain operations at Hydrostation S.At that time the only major buildings on the Institute‘s grounds were what are currently known asthe Wright Building, the Shop, one–half of the lower floor laboratory, the old library, and severalhouses for Station scientists and renters mainly from the naval base. The scientific staff numberedfour, and only John Beers, who subsequently went to Scripps, and I were here all year around.The experience of helping to maintain Station S in the Sargasso Sea was a double–edgedsword. Although I had sailed with my father for several years as a first mate on board his charterboat in New Jersey, being seasick every two weeks on the winter seas around Bermuda doing 24-bottle Nansen casts on board the small, wooden, and round-bottom RV Panularis I spouting diesel
fumes through her deck boards was a dreaded adventure. However, at the same time, it was excitinggoing to sea as a scientist and learning the rudiments of oceanographic sea-going equipment andinstrumentation. What a change to what you see today in terms of accommodations, ships,laboratories, and equipment that you have been able to use as POGOnian scholars at BIOS!In my early career, having the opportunity to work for Shell Oil Company and to work asStaff Geochemist and Assistant Director at BBSR enhanced my understanding of the Earth andocean sciences and broadened my scientific perspective. This paid off in my future endeavors interms of being able to obtain grant support in both ocean and Earth sciences, and eventually climatescience, and to collaborate with scientists from several disciplines. My collaborators over the yearsnow number more than 200 individuals in many fields! It also prepared me for the teaching andcommunication enterprise part of my career, eventually leading to the creation of a new Bachelor ofScience degree program in Global Environmental Science at the University of Hawaii.I would encourage all of you POGOnians, especially in this day and age, to continue to honeyour skills in mathematics and cognate science to provide you with the tools to interpret yourexperimental and field data on the basis of sound theory and modeling. This will also enable you tocommunicate more clearly and to form scientific collaborations with your colleagues in Earthscience and oceanography disciplines that may or may not be your specialty. In addition, it will helpto prepare you for future career changes and opportunities that inevitably will come your way. ThePOGO program alone has enabled you to expand your scientific and outreach horizons and willstand you in good stead for the future.Lesson # 2 can be difficult and one you might not want to hear and that is to work hard andlong. I learned this lesson early on but it was imprinted on me as a graduate student at LehighUniversity. Our department Chair at that time was Hugh Richard Gault who maintained what hecalled ―bed check‖. It may be difficult to believe but he would come into the laboratory at midnightor shortly thereafter every night to check on the graduate students to make sure they were stillworking. I did keep a sleeping sofa in my office for just those occasions. Our workweek was likethat of medical doctors in residency for four to six years. This made quite an impression on me. Ilearned early that science is a hard and generally unforgiving taskmaster and to succeed you have toput the time and effort into it. I conveyed this to all my graduate students and, like Dr. Andersson, Ithink they listened!! I would also encourage you POGOnians to spend the time and effort wiselyand judiciously to solve the problems of the oceans.Lesson # 3 is one we learn early on as scientists--be a skeptic. I remember early in mycollege career while taking courses in scientific philosophy and methodology that the Irish physicistand geologist John Joly had calculated the age of the oceans in 1899 to be 80 to 100 million yearsbased on the input of salts to the sea by rivers and the amount of salt in the sea. Fortunately therewere skeptics around like the Dutch geochemist and mineralogist Willem Nieuwenkamp whopointed out that the salts of the sea recycle through the atmosphere and sediments of the sea floorand the age of the Earth and oceans must be much more, as was required by the 1859 evolutionarytheory of Charles Darwin.In a less dramatic sense, in the early 1960s in my days at Bermuda, I was developing aresearch program studying the calcareous deposits of Bermuda as an indicator of sea level changesduring the Late Pleistocene and looking at the processes controlling strontium concentrations andvertical gradients in the ocean offshore Bermuda. The latter work was an eye-opener. First I
Page 2 and 3: Executive Summary of Year 2 Activit
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Page 6 and 7: 2.3 Course ModulesThe course module
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Page 11 and 12: Gustavo FuentesKathleen SilvanoBenn
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Page 15 and 16: incorporate more laboratory and/or
Page 17 and 18: Details on the 10 students selected
Page 20 and 21: September 2009) and SAFARI'10 works
Page 22 and 23: Invited by the Abdus Salam Internat
Page 24 and 25: Appendix 1. Application Form for th
Page 26 and 27: Summary of your current work (~200
Page 28 and 29: If you are selected as a NF-POGO Sc
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Page 34 and 35: discovered that I was not cut out t
Page 36 and 37: Report for Training Programme for D
Page 38 and 39: 1. IntroductionThe topic of the 200
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Page 42 and 43: Eliliane Vasconcelos CorrêaUnivers
Page 44 and 45: Valeria SeguraInstituto Nacional de
Page 46 and 47: F. Gerald PlumleyBermuda Institute
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NF-POGO Centre of Excellence Year 2 Report

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