Interview with Klaus Wyrtki
209
and are counteracted by vertical diffusion. All these problems were at that time
addressed.
10
At the same time it became quite clear that surface circulation in contrast to
deep circulation was very variable, as we could see from surveys that we made in the
East Australia Current.
While I was in Australia a colleague of mine, a zoologist, spent a sabbatical
at Scripps. When he came back he said, “Klaus, the people at Scripps want your
curriculum vitae”. I sent them my curriculum vitae. Of course in the curriculum vitae
you had to give references. One of the references was Georg W¨ ust, who at that time
was at Columbia University. After about two weeks I got a job offer from Columbia
University. That went that fast.
I tried to find out what the future would offer. At Scripps I would belong to a
tuna research program that stretched all the way from California to Peru, throughout
the eastern tropical Pacific investigating the environment of the tuna population. At
Columbia I would be assigned to a new research ship, the ELTANIN, and I would
go into the Antarctic Ocean. Arnold Gordon eventually got the job, because I said,
“no, no. No Antarctic Ocean, no seasickness, no roaring forties, I stay in the tropics”.
After Indonesia I was spoiled, I didn’t want to go back to the cold climate, so Scripps
institution won.
Likely W¨ ust was disappointed.
W¨ ust was disappointed, of course, but he got Arnold Gordon. That was fine.
On the way from Australia to California I stopped in Hawaii for a Pacific Science
Congress. That was the Pacific Science Congress during which the cornerstone for
the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics was being laid but at that time I was not aware
that I would finish up there.
So, I came to Scripps and the work there was most interesting. It was not data
taking, other people were doing that. It was studying the upper ocean variability.
At that time it had become clear that fisheries and long-term weather prediction are
dependent on oceanographic knowledge on a real-time basis. One needed to know
what happened in the ocean from month to month and from year to year in order to
explain how the environment reacts.
Did you learn also something from biology at that time? Or from biologists?
I didn’t have to know much, I had enough fishery biologists around me and we had
very close interaction with the people who were doing the tuna research in biology,
the tuna marketing and catching, the fishery people actually running the fishing fleets.
We gave them BTs—that was the study on the Costa Rica Dome,
11 on upwelling,
where cold water comes up to within 10 meters and where the tuna boats can put the
10 Wyrtki, K., 1963. The horizontal and vertical field of motion in the Peru Current. Bull. Scripps Inst.
Oceanogr. Univ. Calif., 8 (4), 313–346.
11 Wyrtki, K., 1964: Upwelling in the Costa Rica Dome. Fish. Bull., 63 (2), 355–372.
209
and are counteracted by vertical diffusion. All these problems were at that time
addressed.
10
At the same time it became quite clear that surface circulation in contrast to
deep circulation was very variable, as we could see from surveys that we made in the
East Australia Current.
While I was in Australia a colleague of mine, a zoologist, spent a sabbatical
at Scripps. When he came back he said, “Klaus, the people at Scripps want your
curriculum vitae”. I sent them my curriculum vitae. Of course in the curriculum vitae
you had to give references. One of the references was Georg W¨ ust, who at that time
was at Columbia University. After about two weeks I got a job offer from Columbia
University. That went that fast.
I tried to find out what the future would offer. At Scripps I would belong to a
tuna research program that stretched all the way from California to Peru, throughout
the eastern tropical Pacific investigating the environment of the tuna population. At
Columbia I would be assigned to a new research ship, the ELTANIN, and I would
go into the Antarctic Ocean. Arnold Gordon eventually got the job, because I said,
“no, no. No Antarctic Ocean, no seasickness, no roaring forties, I stay in the tropics”.
After Indonesia I was spoiled, I didn’t want to go back to the cold climate, so Scripps
institution won.
Likely W¨ ust was disappointed.
W¨ ust was disappointed, of course, but he got Arnold Gordon. That was fine.
On the way from Australia to California I stopped in Hawaii for a Pacific Science
Congress. That was the Pacific Science Congress during which the cornerstone for
the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics was being laid but at that time I was not aware
that I would finish up there.
So, I came to Scripps and the work there was most interesting. It was not data
taking, other people were doing that. It was studying the upper ocean variability.
At that time it had become clear that fisheries and long-term weather prediction are
dependent on oceanographic knowledge on a real-time basis. One needed to know
what happened in the ocean from month to month and from year to year in order to
explain how the environment reacts.
Did you learn also something from biology at that time? Or from biologists?
I didn’t have to know much, I had enough fishery biologists around me and we had
very close interaction with the people who were doing the tuna research in biology,
the tuna marketing and catching, the fishery people actually running the fishing fleets.
We gave them BTs—that was the study on the Costa Rica Dome,
11 on upwelling,
where cold water comes up to within 10 meters and where the tuna boats can put the
10 Wyrtki, K., 1963. The horizontal and vertical field of motion in the Peru Current. Bull. Scripps Inst.
Oceanogr. Univ. Calif., 8 (4), 313–346.
11 Wyrtki, K., 1964: Upwelling in the Costa Rica Dome. Fish. Bull., 63 (2), 355–372.