I have the best job in the world. I am a marine chemist whose Erlenmeyer flask is the ocean, whose classroom is a coastal marshland, and whose lab is, well, a lab. Otherwise I can be found in my office near the ocean writing e-mails, manuscripts, and proposals, or, more recently, testifying before Congress and commenting on national news.
If you had asked me to write something about my job six months ago, however, you might have heard a very different story.
For the past 13 years, I have worked at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, a large private, nonprofit marine-research organization. Together with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, we jointly award a Ph.D. in oceanography and ocean engineering. One area of my research is the chemistry and impact of oil spills in the sea. So you probably can guess what I have been doing since late April, following the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Little did I know, however, the extent to which that oil spill, and the demands it made on my time and expertise, would rekindle my enthusiasm for my research—something that by April I had thought was fading. I’ve studied pollution ever since earning my bachelor’s degree. Later it became a topic of my Ph.D. dissertation, and for a long time I found the subject rewarding and challenging.
But a few years ago, my interest began to wane. That was, in part, because of a positive trend in environmental catastrophes. The frequency of oil spills in the United States has dropped significantly, thanks to new regulations following the Exxon Valdez spill. But since that spill, oil-spill science has been dominated by federal laboratories and contractors, focusing on the measurement of specific compounds. My efforts to usher new techniques into the field have been accepted by my peers, but not by many in the regulatory world. I had become distressed by my inability to make a true impact and had grown hungry to turn my energies to something new.
I decided to turn my attention to biofuels—specifically the production of algal-based biofuels. I had a few papers on the topic that were published, submitted, or in the preparation stage, and I had submitted two patents. It was refreshing to read new journals, meet new colleagues, and plan new projects. I had even taken on a doctoral student to study biofuels and said no to one who was interested in oil pollution.
Like Michael Corleone in The Godfather: Part III, though, just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in. On April 26, by which time it was evident that the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico had the markings of a major disaster, I knew that my plans to switch my research focus from black oil to green energy were going to have to be put on hold.
On that day, my colleagues and I had a paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience discussing the discovery of a 35,000-year-old natural eruption of oil off the California coast, leaving behind a massive, extinct “asphalt” volcano. News releases were on the Web, and I started the morning fielding reporters’ calls on that newly published work.
As the day wore on, interest in the Deepwater Horizon disaster intensified to the point that the volcano story itself became extinct. To cap it off (no pun intended), I was scheduled to speak at MIT that evening about communicating science to the public. I had planned to discuss the basics of good science communication, but instead I spoke about my day and the 15 news interviews I had given, including one debriefing with a government official.
By the second week of June, I had testified twice before Congress about the spill and was planning a 14-day cruise in the Gulf of Mexico to hunt for subsurface plumes of oil. On June 15, within the span of six hours, I went from reading Congressional testimony, in a blue suit and shiny dress shoes, to flying to Tampa, Fla., and changing into jeans, a hardhat, and steel-toed boots to begin a research cruise aboard RV Endeavor, financed by the National Science Foundation.
For the next two weeks, the crew and the science team worked around the clock, collecting hundreds of samples. It was clear we were making major discoveries, and spirits were high. Shipboard researchers and workers chattered enthusiastically about what the data meant and the hypotheses they might generate.
One morning, around 3 a.m., a few of my colleagues and I were waiting to recover a sampling device we had lowered over the side of the boat hours before. While sipping coffee in the moonlight, despite the tragedy unfolding around us, we agreed that being a scientist was the best job in the world. It’s hard to explain how happy one can be when doing research that can make a difference.
The work our team did on that cruise led to the first paper published on the spill, in the journal Science, describing the existence of the subsurface plumes, whereupon we were overwhelmed by the news media regarding those findings. That led me to write an opinion essay for CNN about how scientists and the media need to improve the way we explain science. But the most rewarding aspect of my entire career was the opportunity to be an academic liason at the headquarters of the oil-spill response effort, in New Orleans. I interacted with a talented team responding to the spill by providing technical advice on sampling techniques and new technology. In addition, because I was an academic, I could suggest the names of other academics who could contribute but who might not be on the radar of people at the headquarters.
Needless to say, the disappointment I felt in in my work before April 26 has faded, much like Michael Corleone’s did, but for better reasons. I have been able to contribute both by doing research and by communicating science. I am certainly not going to stop my work on biofuels, but I will have to change plans. That’s OK, since it embodies what makes being a scientist such a treasure. You can seize opportunities, explore new fields, and be nimble in your interests. And because of that, my experiences have taught me how much, thankfully, I still have to learn about oil spills and being a scientist.
