Wheeler J. North
1922–2002

Wheeler J. North, professor of environmental science, emeritus, died on December 20. He was 80.
Born in San Francisco, North moved with his family soon afterward to San Diego, where he began exploring tide pools at the age of seven. He also developed an early interest in kelp beds, which would turn out to be his life’s work.

North received his first BS (in electrical engineering) from Caltech in 1944, then returned to Pasadena after the war to earn a second one, in biology, in 1950. His MS and PhD are from the University of California (1953). After several years at Scripps Oceanographic Institution, he returned to Caltech in 1962, first as visiting professor of biology, then as associate professor of environmental health engineering, and finally as professor of environmental science.

Although he taught a popular marine biology course (among others) on campus, North spent much of his time working out of Caltech’s Kerckhoff Marine Laboratory in Corona del Mar, studying the complex ecosystem of the giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) off the California coast. He determined that the kelp beds were shrinking as sewage fed the sea urchin population, which in turn fed on the kelp. He also studied the effect of humans on kelp, in particular the warm-water discharge from the San Onofre nuclear power plant, which deterred kelp development; and oil spills, an environment in which kelp thrive. He devised techniques for restoring and farming kelp forests.

North was one of the pioneers of scuba diving for scientific research, making his first dive in 1949. He purchased one of the first 10 Aqua-Lungs sold in the U.S.; since wet suits did not yet exist, he put on woolen underwear.

In 1972 North described his work to National Geographic: “At day’s end, I often relax by lazily roaming the upper branches of the tall forest where I work. Creatures bizarre and beautiful swarm about me. Overhead, the tangled foliage almost obscures the daylight. But I need no tree climbing irons; only swim fins. The air I breathe is carried on my back. I am a scuba forester and the ‘trees’ I tend are giant vine-like streamers from the ocean floor off Southern California.”

A memorial service was held on February 22 at the Ocean Science Center in Dana Point, where friends, colleagues, students (including five of his ten PhD students), and family gathered to reminisce and “tell Wheeler stories.” Chuck Mitchell, president of MBC Applied Environmental Sciences, who organized the occasion and presided over it, told of meeting North in 1955, after lying about his age (“I told everyone I was 16”) to get a summer job at Scripps. ‘He was unique,” said Mitchell. “He had life-changing, life-directing effects, and we probably didn’t even know it at the time. We have all been spread over time and space, and I’m glad that we have the opportunity to get together here today to compare notes on this phenomenon.”

Mitchell, who was also one of the pioneer divers, recalled his friend’s optimism, curiosity, and patience; the “stratigraphy” of his desk, files, and storerooms. With slides as illustrations, he reviewed some of North’s familiar characteristics (to much amused laughter): his early, self-made diving gear, his shoes with flapping soles, the patches on his wet suit (he used to hold his suit together with bits of old underwear), his string of decaying, uncared-for automobiles and boats, and an ancient tuxedo with a hole in the knee (“he was going to paint his knee but got the hole mended”).

Jim Morgan, the Goldberger Professor of Environmental Engineering, Emeritus, had a very clear memory of his “job seminar” as a prospective faculty member in 1965: “Sailing along talking about particles and polymer chemistry and God knows what else, I happened to look down at the first seat in the front row, only to see Wheeler sound asleep! I wondered, was my future academic fate already sealed?” He was assured by a colleague afterward that Wheeler always slept through seminars (“I think it’s all that scuba diving”), and “that was the beginning of a 38-year beautiful friendship.” And reciprocity—“Wheeler would sleep through most of my seminars, and I would sleep through his.”

Morgan noted North’s “visionary pursuit of an idea for ‘kelp farms’ for energy generation,” and another idea (on which Morgan had collaborated as an aquatic chemist) for forming carbon dioxide hydrate solids in seawater, which North envisioned as a potential process for storing carbon dioxide from combustion in power plants in deep coastal waters. Morgan also showed slides, including the E&S cover shown on the previous page, and the 1972 National Geographic cover (“when very few people were even using the words ‘environmental science’”); also pictures of North “obliterating sea urchins with a hammer,” introducing new Caltech undergrads to his ice chest full of sea creatures at Freshman Camp, and dressed in a tuxedo as Morgan accepted the Clark Award three years ago.

Another pioneer diver, who became Scripps’s diving officer and helped spread the techniques of scientific diving, was North’s friend Jim Stewart. He joined Scripps as a volunteer diver in 1952 and helped start the kelp study project with North—“over the years we’ve moved a lot of kelp.” He told anecdotes of storms and rescues in the Orca, a converted yacht, and fishing for dinner off the back of the boat. “Wheeler and I worked together on a lot of projects, conducted an awful lot of studies, and had a lot of fun,” said Stewart.

One of his fondest remembrances was what Stewart called the “Tampico days.” In 1957, the Tampico Maru, a 360-ft. tanker out of San Pedro, went one degree off course, and “put that thing right up there on the rocks at 4 a.m.,” spilling about 20,000 barrels of diesel oil into a small cove. North and his team arrived soon thereafter to study what happened to the marine life and found that the oil killed all the animals that grazed on the kelp, allowing a vast kelp forest to flourish. North and his colleagues studied its growth, and published the first data in 1964 and several papers thereafter.

“Compared to other spills, the Tampico Maru was right up there with them—huge,” said Alan Mearns, senior staff scientist with NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). “It was the largest diesel spill on the West Coast and the first spill followed by longterm biological monitoring.” Before leaving for NOAA’s oil spill team in Seattle, Mearns had worked with North in the ’70s on the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project, surveying the coast for water pollution from Point Conception to the border.

When Mearns and North ran into each other again in 1997, Mearns realized what
a wealth of data North had collected in the aftermath of the Tampico Maru. “This was an important spill because it was a diesel spill. We had very few cases of documented diesel spill and effects, and here we had 20 years of documented study.” North got his unpublished data together, and NOAA will shortly publish a technical memo under North’s name on the 20-year history of records from the Tampico Maru. “I have to help finish this particular part of the story that Wheeler began,” Mearns concluded.

Lee Peterson, BS ’64, MS ’66, PhD ’74, was a graduate student of North’s, whom he credited with the inspiration to learn to fly, as well as dive (flying was another passion of North’s). He fondly recalled flying out to a site, diving, then getting on the airplane again and going up to 10,000 feet. “That’s really a no-no,” he said. “Sometimes my nails were getting blue.” He spoke of towing kelp plants from Newport to Palos Verdes and tying them to chains underwater. The air in the crew’s tanks lasted about 45 minutes, “but Wheeler would be out for two hours on one tank,” said Peterson. “To this day, I don’t understand how he could last so long. But he was so relaxed, and he loved being down there so much, maybe he just didn’t breathe.”

North’s family joined in the remembrances. Brother-in-law Dennis Moyer (whose remarks were read in his absence by his wife, Elizabeth Best Moyer) offered his own “brushstroke” to the other “elegant, revealing, and often humorous brushstrokes that create this most personal portrait of Wheeler.” Moyer remembered North’s “impishly fine wit” and “loved the fullness and patient clarity with which he answered my questions about his work.” He also noted his selfless devotion to their mother-in-law toward the end of her life. “I, we, will be eternally grateful for his singular sense of familial duty, friendship, and love.”

North’s wife, Barbara, described the “family airplane.” When he couldn’t get anyone else to photograph the kelp beds from the air, “he went and bought an airplane,” and Barbara got her own pilot’s license before she would set foot in it. When he realized that it’s hard to take pictures from a low-wing plane, North “cut two huge holes in the bottom of the plane, one under each seat, so you could look down. I don’t think the FAA ever knew what we had done to this plane.”

Like several of the other speakers, Barbara had met Wheeler at the Scripps student summer program, where she also dove to study the kelp beds and hung around to spend thousands of hours underwater. Eventually, “Wheeler incurred the displeasure of some of the senior research staff at Scripps by pointing out to them that perhaps it was more effective to actually go into the kelp bed and study it instead of sitting on a boat deck and speculating about it. Caltech understood that perhaps the direct approach was better and stole him away from Scripps. He was forever grateful about that.”

“When I was a kid,” said North’s son, also named Wheeler, “if you were going to do something with Pop, that meant that you got stuck in the back of an [open] truck on top of a big pile of gear and ropes, and you were tied in and spent four or five hours watching the world go by backwards. And eventually, you got to some really neat place and spent a couple of weeks running around, but learning a lot about life and science.” His father, he said, exuded happiness and brought out happiness in others: “We would walk down the street, and people would walk by and just start smiling.”

Wheeler North, Sr., loved limericks, so his son read a long limerick that he had composed for the occasion, “A Poem of a Sort about Wheeler J. North,” which began: “There once was a man named Whee/ Deep secrets he teased from the sea. . . .” and went on to tell the story of his father’s life in numerous, humorous stanzas.

At the end of the ceremony, it was announced that the Southern California Academy of Sciences was establishing the Wheeler North Award for Scientific Excellence. “The recipient of the Wheeler North Award will have demonstrated commitment to research that emphasizes the Southern California area and a commitment to the Southern California scientific community.” —JD