ENHS Nature Trails January 2004 Article 1

This month's speaker: Dr. Craig Young

There seems to be a common thread of fascination with nature at an early age amongst our speakers, especially if something in the natural world creeps, crawls, appears unusual, or looks like something from the era of dinosaurs. This month's speaker, Marine Biologist Craig Young, is no exception. When reading his own comments about his growing up days, I had the feeling that Dr. Young still loves the creatures and the discovery as much as he ever did. Here's what he has to say.

FROM MOUNTAINS TO TIDEPOOLS
I was very interested in Nature as a youngster. Until I was 9 years old, I lived near the mountains of Utah, where I wandered around collecting rocks, bugs and insects. Fossils were plentiful, and I amassed quite an impressive collection of fossil brachiopods, crinoids, mollusks, plants and fishes as an elementary school student. We moved to central California when I was 9 and I discovered tidepools shortly thereafter. Almost immediately, I decided to be a Marine Biologist, and never changed my mind. Pursuing my interest was easy in my family. Though neither of my parents has a college degree and neither is particularly interested in science, they contributed immeasurably to my career choice by encouraging my interests. They were always willing to stop at rock shops and natural history sites on family trips, and my dad often accompanied me on collecting trips to the mountains or the shore. I have vivid memories as a high school student of my father sitting on an intertidal rock, feeding scraps of food to the shore crabs while I poked around for more exotic animals.

Not only my parents, but my Latin teacher, and a friend of the family who was a biology teacher at another high school supported my curiosity in living things. When the family friend learned of my interest in biology, he brought me animals to dissect and some cheap glassware, then entrusted me each summer to care for his collection of rare native California fishes while he was on vacation.

NOT JUST NONFICTION INSPIRES
At a relatively young age, I found three books in the school library that really influenced my career direction. The first (and most important) was Animals without Backbones by Ralph Buchsbaum. This opened a whole new world of invertebrate zoology to imagination. I read it several times and was later privileged to meet and thank Dr. Buchsbaum as a graduate student. The second, Between Pacific Tides by Ed Ricketts showed me what could be learned by simply observing natural phenomena in the field. The third, Log of the Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck convinced me that Marine Biology could be a grand adventure as well as an academic pursuit.

In college, my landmark experience was an opportunity to take classes at the University of Washington's marine laboratory at Friday Harbor. It was here that I first watched fertilization and early embryology under the microscope. Invertebrate embryology subsequently became my main field of endeavor.

2 DIVES IN A PISCES SUB AND 3 NEW SPECIES
I have specialized in quite a few different areas, but will tell you how I became interested in the deep sea. I was a Ph.D. student in Canada, working at SCUBA depths on sea-squirt (Ascidian) ecology, when there arose an opportunity to tag along on a short submersible expedition to one of the western Canadian fjords. I made 2 dives in a Pisces sub on that trip. On the first dive, I discovered (and later described) three new species of ascidians that nobody else had noticed because they were not specialists on the group. This sparked my interest in deep water. A few years later, I was hired as a shallow-water ecologist at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, an institution that operates oceangoing ships and submersibles. Shortly after I arrived, a marine geologist left the institution, leaving a scheduled cruise to the Bahamas up for grabs. I convinced the director of the institution to give me the cruise, with only about 2 weeks to prepare for it. We reared the embryos of 3 deep-sea echinoderms on that cruise (a first), and I was soon able to obtain NSF funding that allowed me to develop a career in deep-sea reproduction and development.

THOSE AMAZING ASCIDIANS
Most of my nature hobbies have become components of my career, so they are no longer my hobbies. I am a collector of deep-sea animals (which I use for teaching) and of Ascidians (my main taxonomic interest). At present, my main avocation is the history of marine science and of microscopy in the 18th and 19th centuries. Although I am not a trained historian, I have written a number of articles on the history of science. I collect old natural history and marine science books and brass microscopes. Since moving to the Oregon coast, I have become an avid watcher of big waves. (Dr. Young came to Coos Bay for a job as director of the University of Oregon's Institute of Marine Biology in 2002.)

MEMORABLE TRAVELS
My career has provided a singular opportunity to travel much of the world, something I have really enjoyed, and also to dive in submersibles to many parts of the deep sea. Although I have spent the most time in western Europe, perhaps the most memorable trips were two visits to Sri Lanka. I was invited there to teach animal systematics in the midst of the ongoing civil war, and had the opportunity to see much of that exotic country in the company of my local colleagues.

WHAT WILL WE HEAR ABOUT FRIDAY NIGHT?
Using video and a few slides, I will give you a quick tour of some of the main kinds of deep-sea habitats, including muddy basins, rocky seamounts and slopes, hydrothermal vents, and cold methane seeps. The focus will be on bizarre forms of animal life in deep water. I will also give a very brief introduction to the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology.

Dr. Young received his B.S. and M.S. from Brigham Young University under Dr. Lee Braithwaite, "one of the most talented and devoted teachers of Invertebrate Zoology in the country." While there, Craig took summer classes at Hopkins Marine Station of Stanford University and at Friday Harbor Laboratories, University of Washington. His Ph.D. was earned at the University of Alberta (Canada) under Professor Fu-Shiang Chia, a prominent invertebrate embryologist. He currently serves as an editor of Advances in Marine Biology, the most cited publication in the field and is an honorary fellow at the Southampton Oceanography Centre in England, the largest oceanographic facility in Europe. Dr. Young also takes time from his demanding schedule as Director of OIMB to be a visiting professor at Kings College London. He is actively involved in various deep-water research projects in the Gulf of Mexico, off Louisiana and Mississippi. "We are working on the reproduction of deep-sea mussels, tubeworms and reef-building corals using submersibles."

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