EPILOGUE: SCRIPPS AS IT IS TODAY
In Ending this Account just short of the greatest period of expansion in the rather brief history of oceanography, the authors are fully aware that much remains to be told of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and its accomplishments. To relate in comparable detail the events of the last fifteen years the present volume would have to be at least double its present length, and still much would have to be omitted. The scope of the institution's expeditions, the diversity of its research, the ever-increasing number of its graduates—trends which have largely been established during the era of Roger Revelle, and his successors, Fred Spiess and William Nierenberg—are the story of the present as well as the recent SIO, and none is a closed chapter. “Scripps As It Is Today,” and the further story of how it became what it is, would furnish the material for at least another volume. Hopefully, this may someday be written.
In the meantime the following summary is presented for purposes of comparison with those eras in the history of SIO which are covered in the preceding chapters, to enable the reader to see what has become of Ritter's “baby elephant.” These facts and figures reflect little of the human element so important in the development of any institution. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography, whatever it is today, is a result of the ideas and efforts of individuals too numerous to list.
Administratively, Scripps is now an institution for research and graduate instruction within the University of California, San Diego, one of the newest of the university's nine campuses. UCSD, which is expected to grow to an enrollment of some 27,500 students by the year 2000, will eventually be made up of twelve undergraduate colleges and several graduate schools. The first of these, Revelle College, was opened in 1964, and John Muir College is scheduled to begin classes in 1967. The Scripps Institution was much of the attraction and provided the nucleus for this new general campus, which is located on the mesa to the north and east of the original pueblo tract.
Scripps, including the affiliated institutes of Geophysics and Planetary
Organizationally, Scripps is divided into two teaching departments, Oceanography and Marine Biology, and cooperates closely with the Earth Sciences Department of Revelle College. Its chief research units are the Divisions of Oceanic Research, Earth Sciences, and Marine Biology, the Marine Physical Laboratory and the Visibility Laboratory. Also carrying on research projects on a more or less permanent basis are the Marine Life Research Group, the Applied Oceanography Group, and the Physiological Research Laboratory. Other research programs are set up for varying lengths of time to study specific problems, usually drawing staff members from diverse divisions within the institution.
Also located on the campus are branches of two university-wide units, the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics and the Institute of Marine Resources, both of which cooperate closely with the Scripps Institution. The Institute of Marine Resources supports research within the SIO, and its director must be a member of the Scripps faculty. Cooperating with the institution in the maintenance of a radio station with worldwide coverage is the Fishery Oceanography Laboratory of the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries. This laboratory is located on land adjacent to Scripps in La Jolla, in a building which also houses the headquarters and laboratory of the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission and Scripps Tuna Oceanography Research, STOR.
Most of the readily accessible building sites on the original pueblo tract have been used, and future facilities will necessarily be located on the more hilly and removed sections of the institution's land. The original George H. Scripps building was enlarged in 1958 and now contains central administrative offices as well as laboratories. Substantial additions have also been made to Ritter Hall, which now has six times its original floor space for offices and laboratories. Sverdrup
The Thomas Wayland Vaughan Aquarium-Museum, completed in 1951, freed, as planned, the original Library for its main purpose. The Library has been remodeled, and now contains over 63,000 volumes, 87,000 reports and reprints, 3000 serials, a large collection of charts and a valuable special collection of historical oceanography. It is one of the most complete oceanographic libraries in the world.
Other permanent buildings at the La Jolla site include the Francis B. Sumner Auditorium, which was completed in 1960, and various special research facilities. These are an Experimental Aquarium, a facility for Sea Water Conversion and Core Storage, the building of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, a Hydraulic Laboratory and a Physiological Research Laboratory. There are also a number of temporary frame buildings on the campus, including the original Director's Residence and some of the original cottages. These have been converted, for the most part, into offices and laboratories, and temporary structures also house machine and electronic shops.
Although more than half of the Scripps staff works in La Jolla, a considerable fraction is accommodated in facilities on Point Loma in or close to the buildings of the Navy Electronics Laboratory, with which the institution has maintained close working relations. The headquarters and many staff members of the Marine Physical Laboratory are located on Point Loma, as are the Visibility Laboratory and the activities of the Applied Oceanography Group. The Chester W. Nimitz Marine facility of the Scripps Institution, a ship-operating base with five new buildings including facilities for docking, maintenance and expedition staging, was completed at the beginning of 1966 on a six-acre tract leased from the Navy on Point Loma. This provides, for the first time, a single home base for the Scripps research fleet, which is the largest such fleet outside the federal government.
The Scripps Institution now operates eight ocean-going research vessels, ranging in size from the 65-foot T-441 to the 213-foot Argo, as well as a number of small craft. A total of 19 ships have been operated by the institution since its beginning, the majority of these having been built for other purposes and converted for research use. The last three additions to the fleet, however, including the 95-foot Ellen B. Scripps, the 130- foot Alpha Helix and the 210-foot Thomas
An important part of the Scripps fleet is the 355-foot spar buoy laboratory, FLIP (for Floating Instrument Platform). Unique among the world's research craft, FLIP is towed horizontally to its station, then “flipped” into a vertical position by flooding ballast tanks. In this upright position, with 300 of its 355 feet under water, FLIP becomes a remarkably stable platform for making accurate scientific measurements at sea.
The institution has a number of other special facilities which have largely been developed to meet specific research needs. One of these is radio station WWD for ship to shore communications, operated, as mentioned previously, jointly with the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries. The 1000-foot pier constructed in 1916 still receives wide use, and the intake pipes located at its extreme end continue to provide an abundant supply of clean sea water for the laboratories. Other special facilities include an offshore underwater reserve, a large collection of deep sea sediment cores, a collection of original echogram soundings over a wide area of the Pacific and other oceans, and an oceanographic data archive of some half-million bathythermograph observations. Carbon-14 and tritium laboratories and electron microprobe and electron microscope laboratories, as well as six mass spectrographs, are also available for use. In addition, there is a large collection of sea water samples, a fish collection of more than 100,000 specimens of some 1500 marine species, and another large collection of marine invertebrates. Scripps scientists also have access to the University Computer Center.
Such specialized facilities would indicate that the institution's research activities have greatly expanded since the departure of Director Sverdrup, and such is indeed the case. The faculty and academic staff has grown from 16 in 1948 to 132, and is expected to increase. Including support staff, the total payroll numbers approximately 800 employees. The number of graduate students in 1966 is 124, and up to the present a total of 146 Ph.D. degrees have been awarded for work at the institution.
All of these people have kept busy, and it is impossible even to summarize the institution's research accomplishments in this brief outline. Since the first major expedition in 1950, Scripps ships have steamed more than 901,406 miles in long expeditions alone, and in all
Meanwhile the research activity on shore goes on at an unflagging pace, constantly uncovering new problems as it adds to the store of knowledge of the world's oceans. More than 200 scientific papers and books are published by the Scripps staff each year, representing a variety and complexity of scientific work which no single individual could possibly encompass. Nor is there a foreseeable end to the growth and diversification of the Scripps research program. “The oceans are so big that no institution or country alone can find out what we need to know,” Roger Revelle said in 1964. “Scripps was a pioneer in oceanography, and we still are … we are just approaching revolutionary knowledge.”