Cuba has lost its Mother Ocean. Dr. María Elena Ibarra Martín, director of the University of Havana’s Center for Marine Research (Centro de Investigaciones Marinas, CIM) since 1981, passed away yesterday afternoon after a month-long struggle following heart surgery. CIM is the only academic institution in Cuba where marine biologists are trained, and her loss is mourned by hundreds of her students, many of whom grew up to become her colleagues — and friends. Her selfless, tireless dedication goes far beyond words, and the impact she has made on education, conservation, and her unique model of personal integrity will no doubt endure for centuries to come. When I last saw Doctora in February, she was as busy as ever, wrestling mountains of paperwork on her desk while never letting go of her visionary perspective about conservation and education. Nor did she ever let go of her special fondness for sea turtles and her love for and dedication to her students.

I first met Dr. Ibarra in 2000 while I was Vice President at Ocean Conservancy (OC), and the work we have done together has continued to blossom nearly nine years later (now under the auspices of The Ocean Foundation). During the summer of 2003, I nominated Dr. Ibarra for the “Local Hero” section of OC’s magazine, Blue Planet Quarterly to honor her many contributions to marine science and conservation. I can still remember the challenge of convincing her to allow me to write the article. She was always uncomfortable with accolades and recognition, and in this case she tried to encourage me to write about the institution and students rather than her. She complied only when I convinced her that the article could help her students by bringing recognition to her institution. And to snap the photo above required inviting her out to a local cafe for refrescos, then quietly pulling out the camera and engaging in yet more negotiations. Thankfully, she finally complied.

I managed to track down a copy of that article and I believe reprinting it here today offers the best way I could pay homage to this incredible woman:

Post Script: Within the next few weeks, both of the students I quoted in the article will make Dr. Ibarra very proud. Julia Azanza Ricardo will receive her Doctorate from the University of Havana and she now oversees the Guanahacabibes Sea Turtle project. Daylin Muñoz Nuñez will receive her Master’s degree from Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and soon begins work with Environmental Defense Fund.

A green sea turtle hatchling in Guanahacabibes Peninsula, Cuba

At her request, Dr. Ibarra’s ashes will be spread among the sands of the beaches of Cuba’s Guanahacabibes peninsula. Per her wishes, there will be no formal ceremony or funeral. If you would like to pay tribute to Dr. Ibarra’s memory, a contribution to The Ocean Foundation’s “Cuba Marine Research & Conservation Fund” will go directly to the Guanahacabibes Sea Turtle project and research expeditions to Cuba’s Gulf of Mexico Coast, both collaborative programs with CIM that are supporting the research of nearly 20 students.

Woven deeply into every speech I have ever given about exploring the oceans is a reverant tribute to Lewis and Clark and their epic expedition to the new American west. Dispatched by President Thomas Jefferson to explore the vast new territory recently acquired in the Louisiana Purchase, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark also searched, in vain, for the fabled northwest passage, a water route connecting Atlantic and Pacific through North America, sought by explorers for centuries as a shorter trade route. I always carry the audiobook version of their original journals on my iPod, and their own words describing their fascinating encounters with wildlife, native Americans, and emotional reflections on the profound natural beauty that unfolded before them continue to ignite my imagination and desire to explore as if I were still 12 years old.

As our flight began its final approach into the Rapid City area, I peered out the window and gazed upon the fresh snow covering the beautiful Black Hills of South Dakota, which stretched in all directions, fading softly into a white horizon. And though I had never before set eyes upon these parts before — this was my first to any state in this section of the contienent — the scenery felt strangely familiar and welcoming, as if I were revisiting a favorite childhood home. Perhaps it was the many poetic words of Meriwether and William that had taken root in my consciousness, but as we touched down I felt I had landed in a familiar, warmly welcoming territory I had never set foot in.

As I signed the paperwork at the rental car counter, I asked the agent whether I’d likely see anything if I made the journey up the mountain to see Mt. Rushmore National Memorial. She didn’t offer much hope — it was still snowing and conditions looked grim. But this would be my only opportunity and I told her I’d be happy just to see a nostril through the clouds.

The four-wheel drive of my latest rented Subaru Forester was of little help on the ice- and snow-covered roads winding away from the airport. I nearly slid through the first stop sign I came to. The main highway up the mountain was not much better and conditions became increasingly treacherous as the road became steeper and its turns sharper. The last few miles were typical of many of our national treasures — dotted with tourist traps, gift stores, and hotels boasting that theirs was the largest water slide. All were closed and on a Monday morning I was practically the only car on the road. At last I arrived at the park entrance. It felt a bit silly to pay 10 bucks to park in the nearly empty, cavernous parking garage (but I told myself it was going to a good cause after all).

With the morning temperature hovering at about minus 5 F, I bundled up and made my way up the stairs and caught my first glimpse of eight magnificent nostrils. The storm had cleared for the moment, and the sight of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln was magnificent and inspiring, a powerful and unusual nexus of nature, art , history and the indomitable human spirit, standing tall under the morning’s blanket of snow.

The peaceful silence of the morning was broken by the sound of a snowblower and a snow shovel scraping across the cold granite. National Park Service worker Megan McFarland was at the other end of the shovel, greeting me with a smile, frozen, snow-covered strands of her bangs sprouting from beneath her hoodie. Megan kindly oriented me to the Memorial, including, thankfully, where I could find a warm meal. As we chatted, I explained why I was there, a marine biologist atop a snowy mountain, almost exactly 1,000 miles from the nearest salt water. Megan smiled and told me that though she’s only seen the ocean once, she has always loved the ocean, has a sand collection, and even has a beach house with a view of Mt. Rushmore.

In photos of her home she emailed to me later in the week, I saw that indeed Megan’s mountain top home resembled a beach home I might find in Long Beach Island, New Jersey. It was full of shells she had received as gifts or bought herself, paintings of ocean waves, light houses, and statuettes of mermaids. And among the photos Megan sent, one showed that her beach house did indeed have a view through the evergreens of the face of Mt. Rushmore. "I’ve had an affinity for nature since I was a child. In fact, if I’d been raised near the ocean I probably would’ve grown up in a tidal pool. But growing up in the midwest, on a prairie in South Dakota, I’ve developed a greater appreciation for things of the ocean. My first visit was the Pacific at sunset I felt I had reached the heart beat of the earth," she wrote.

The next morning I arrived at an enormous building complex bearing the name "Rapid City Central High School." The cavernous interior was teeming with students…2,300 of them. I thought to myself that this school is 23 times the size of the high school I had just visited the previous Friday in Macksville, Kansas.

I checked in at the security station, where video feeds from all corners of the massive complex flickered on a computer monitor. A gentleman with a walkie-talkie escorted me through the sea of students, each bearing an ID badge around their neck. He handed me off to another walkie-talkie-equipped official that delivered me, safe and sound, to my destination, the classroom of Michael J. Slaback, who greeted me with a warm smile and joked about the size of the school — that it would make a good shopping mall. It would!

As Michael escorted me through the building to the auditorium where I would be giving two back-to-back hour-long talks that morning, I saw from the way students greeted him that he was well liked and one of those special teachers who takes the initiative to seek out and find rewarding opportunities for his students, even if it means working well beyond his role as a social studies teacher. He’s led Central High School’s National Ocean Sciences Bowl team along with its National Science Bowl team, and proudly showed me the trophies the latter had won at the regional level. Though I don’t remember how this came up during our conversation about science education, I’ll never forget the fact that Michael is also a vampire movie buff extraordinaire, with a collection of over 800 films! Michael has lived all over the country, and first encountered the ocean in a big way at the age of 27 in Boston, Massachussets, where he lived for a while and became enchanted with the feeling of a coastal community and the taste of fresh seafood.

Along the way I was introduced to Assistant Principal Denelle Sprigler who also serves as the school’s science director. Her first encounter with the ocean came during her honeymoon to Hawaii when she was 32. They arrived at night, and her face lit up as she described seeing the beautiful turquoise waters in the light of the next day. Denelle graciously expressed her gratitude for my visit, and we talked about the importance of such exchanges and how much we still have to learn from each other around such a large and diverse country. And it’s not just the oceans that we need to learn about. She told me that a few years ago a fellow teacher from an eastern city had asked her if Indians still live in teepees in South Dakota. She informed the individual, "No….they live in houses." It’s apparent that Denelle still can’t believe that such a question could have been asked by a teacher.

The first group assembled, around 200 to 300 students, including students from the local middle schools that came over by bus — it was too cold to walk. I met science teacher Rachel Rasmussen, who teaches grades 9 to 12 and has a most impressive range of subjects, including ecology, meteorology and geology. We talked about kids and science and the need for more scientists in this country. During my presentation, I show images of the Gemini and Apollo space program era, recalling the time when it seemed everyone wanted to be an astronaut or scientist when they grew up. No more. Only three or four hands were raised when I asked how many wanted to be a scientist. Rachel suggested that students may not be interested in science because they perceive it as too much work. I asked the audience directly. She was right — lots of hands. "Being a scientist is a lot of work, but it’s never too much work if you enjoy what you’re doing." I said, trying to convince them that being a scientist is, actually, cool. I showed them the photo (above) I had taken of Mt. Rushmore and pointed out Teddy Roosevelt, a champion of conservation, cited as one of the reasons he was included in the monument. I asked the students, "Aren’t you glad that people like Teddy Roosevelt had the foresight to set aside some of our lands to protect them for you and your children?" I saw heads nod. And I spoke of how important it is for us to do the same thing for our ocean territory, which still remains largely unprotected. I also told them I was pretty sure Teddy winked at me.

When Michael saw I had brought a video camera with me, he sought out senior Joel White, who hopes to attend South Dakota State University next year and has a broad range of interests, including video. He was kind enough to video most of the second session, and I hope to post portions of it later. As a token of my appreciation I gave Joel a coveted Barack Obama Inauguration button that I brought with me from the recent events in Washington. I’ve been amazed and gratified at just how popular such items have been with young people during this expedition. I was also gratified at the number of students who approached me after each of the presentations to express their interest in the oceans — roughly half here had never seen the ocean.

As I dashed from Central High School to the airport I saw something I hadn’t yet seen on this trip: Asphalt. I heard the radio announcer say it was going up to 9 degrees that day "A scorcher!" he exclaimed, as the snow slowly began melting from the streets. I had left on the early flight the previous day to give myself a few hours to explore, but it wasn’t nearly enough. I wanted to see more of the Black Hills, of this strangely familiar place that speaks to me in its unique way. And as South Dakota faded from view beneath the clouds, my thoughts drifted to Lewis and Clark, and then to my chance meeting with Megan McFarland, her beach house in the sky, an individual more closely connected to the oceans than many I know who live within a stone’s throw. And I thought of my own deep connection to the scenery below, perhaps the unlikeliest of landlocked locales for an ocean doctor. It’s a place I waited 50 years to see, but a place to which I will surely return.

Squid Attack!

It’s the fantasy of many a marine biologist and explorer. To catch a glimpse of the giant squid, alive, and in its natural habitat: The deep ocean. Giant squid have been scientifically documented at a size of up to an incredible 43 feet long based on specimens that have washed ashore. I’ve seen one such specimen at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. Laying there pickled and motionless in its sterile white display case, it was hard to imagine this animal rocketing about the dark depths, living up to its reputation as a formidable predator. During one of his talks when I first met oceanographer Bob Ballard, he compared trying to find the giant squid from a submersible to trying to find an F-15 jet racing by, on a mountain top, at night, in a driving rainstorm, with a flashlight. Yesterday I had second thoughts about looking for the giant squid when one of its cousins, less than 2% of its size, disabled my sub and aborted my dive as I was descending through 1,300 feet.

In all the years I’ve been scuba diving, I’ve never been attacked by a sea creature. This, of course, excludes two unnerving but harmless remoras that simultaneously hitched a ride on my legs, or countless tiny dusky damsel fish that bit at my chest to defend their territory they felt I was invading, or stinging hydroids I accidentally brushed against. Never have I (knowingly) been mistaken for food while exploring the depths — until now. On almost all of our sub dives here in the Bering Sea, starting at close to 1,000 feet, we’ve encountered the “squid layer,” concentrations of 6-12″ squid, Loligo opalescens, which go by the official common name of “Opalescent inshore squid” but are more commonly known on the west coast as “California market squid.” My encounters with these mollusks have given me new respect for what I have come to recognize as sleek and skilled predatory missiles whose prey don’t stand a chance.

Squid Attack! Note squid on light, ink

Squid are truly jet-propelled. They swim faster than any other invertebrate by rapidly shooting water out of their mantle cavity into a jet stream nozzle they can steer, like a jet boat. Some squid have been clocked up to nearly 15 miles per hour. Underwater, that’s practically light speed. Our subs clock in at about 3 miles per hour. Their blinding speed, coupled with their armament of two powerful tentacles (in addition to their 8 legs), barbed suckers and razor sharp beak, give them quite an edge over their prey, which include small fish, crustaceans, and mollusks, among others. Many of the squid’s prey, like lanternfish, are bioluminescent, creating their own flashes of light. Squid are highly tuned to these bright flashes and are powerfully drawn to any source of light…like the lights of a descending submarine.

Fur seals on St. Paul Island

A massive triangle of light in the middle of the Sea of Japan is so brilliant it’s visible from space. The source of light was a mystery until someone realized that the fleets of industrial fishing boats that pursue squid know well about the squid’s lust for light. This triangle marks the position of the Japanese squid fishing fleet. Each vessel may have up to 50 lamps of up to 3,500 watts. The entire fleet may be using 200 megawatts to power these lights. That’s nearly 20 percent of the generating capacity of Unit #3 of Southern California’s San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, enough electricity for nearly 250,000 homes.

Squid are commercially fished around the world, including in the United States. And squid are also taken from the sea as bycatch, the unintentional catch of one species when fishing for another. This has been a serous problem here in the Bering Sea when fishing boats seeking Alaskan pollock were hauling up far more squid than pollock, necessitating fishing restrictions. The seemingly limitless bounty of squid, as with so many other animals in the sea, has turned out not to be so limitless after all. They are a critical part of the ecosystem, voracious predators themselves, and, in turn, serving as prey for all sorts of fish, porpoises, whales and seals. The fur seals we saw on St. Paul Island are just one of the species that depend on squid.

Squid Attack! Two squid rocket toward starboard light

As I descended into Zhemchug Canyon yesterday past 1,300 feet yesterday, I reported to Mike at the navigation station on Esperanza that I had entered the “squid layer.” My external lights were on, as were Michelle’s in the other sub about 100 feet below me, so that we could maintain visual contact during the dive, a safety precaution at these depths. But to a squid, my lights meant a meal, and they pursued me with intent to consume. Ink was everywhere, they clung to the lights with their tentacles and attacked with their beaks. They torpedoed in all directions around me, leaving black clouds of ink hanging in their paths. So much ink accumulated it appeared that my lights were smoking. On the front of the sub was tied a mesh bag of styrofoam cups. Under pressure, the air in the styrofoam cups compresses, and the cups shrink to a fraction of their original size. The crew had creatively decorated the cups with clever slogans and artwork…a great souvenir. I noticed the squid were especially attracted to the white, reflective cups and grabbed onto the mesh bag, trying to reach the goodies inside.

What is it? We believe it's a squid egg case

I noticed something else — squid parts. Some of the squid ended up as calamari, having taken the unfortunate route to my lights through the sub’s thrusters. Suddenly, the thrusters sounded different, more faint. The sub was no longer descending and it began to spin. One of my vertical thrusters was offline. I tried powering the thruster circuit off and on again, reversing direction like you would on an outboard motor to clear debris, but to no avail. The sub did what it was supposed to do…it sacrificed a two dollar fuse to save a $15,000 thruster. I would not make it to the bottom, just another 400 feet below me. The topside team wisely instructed me to terminate my dive and prepare for recovery.

As I slowly made the ascent back to Esperanza, I realized my image of squid had changed forever. How different was my image of these agile, powerful animals from the my first sight of squid, compressed into a frozen block inside a cardboard box my father had pulled from the general store’s freezer in Cape May Point, New Jersey as we were heading off to cast our rods into the Delaware Bay. That image of the giant squid laying at the Los Angeles County Museum suddenly had life and gave me pause about the wisdom of maintaining the fantasy of pursuing such a formidable creature in the dark depths. But a moment later, I came to my senses. I’ll still take my chances for a fleeting glimpse of that magnificent animal. Later that day, I smiled when I read what one of the crew had written on one of the styrofoam cups: “No pressure, no diamond.”