Interviews

Jim Charters
Jim is 54 years old, but will be 55 by the time the ship leaves port for the next cruise. He lives in the San Diego area, and has 2 sons and twin daughters. Three of his children are getting married this year! This made Jim go out and buy a tuxedo instead of renting one. He has been at Scripps for 27 years working as a computer engineer. In his spare time, he likes to rebuild and tinker with old cars. His favorite is an azure blue, ’65 Mustang that he bought during his college years and has completely rebuilt. He still drives it to work (when he is on land!). Read the interview »

Dave Murline
Dave Murline is 38 years old and has worked for Scripps the past 16 years. He sails as the permanent Chief Mate of the RV Roger Revelle and has sailed as a relief Captain on the New Horizon, Sproul and Revelle. Being raised in a Navy family, he grew up in different places. For the first four years of his life, he lived in Cartegena, Columbia; he has also lived in Balboa, Panama, Coronado and San Pedro, California. When his Dad retired from the Navy, his family moved back to Coronado, California. His parents always enjoyed taking long adventurous road trips. Dave also has the “travel bug”. Working at Scripps is the “perfect” job for him, because it allows him to travel and see exotic ports of call. He lives on Sunset Cliffs with his fiancée, Valerie, their 16-yr. old son, Chris, their 2 Vizsla pups, Okos and Sziren, and Meely, the punk Persian cat. They met, of all places, in a shipyard in Pascogula, Mississippi where she was a Logistics project manager building the RV Revelle. Valerie now works for the US government, and writes computer software for military ships. They will “tie the knot” on June 3rd and then go on a safari in South Africa for their honeymoon. Read the interview »

Julia Getsiv
Julia Getsiv is a 31 year old marine geologist and works at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Hatfield Marine Center in Newport, Oregon. She was born and raised Vancouver, Washington where her Mom still lives in the house in which she grew up. Julia has 2 older brothers and a sister and will be getting married this September to Ethan Clemons, a marine biologist who studies salmon at the National Marine Fisheries Service in Newport. Read the interview »

Bob “Yogi” Elder
Rachel Haymon has known Bob “Yogi” Elder, the team leader on this expedition for the Deep Submergence Operations Group, since 1989 when Rachel and Dan Fornari first used Argo to survey the East Pacific Rise at 9°-10°N. Yogi is 49 years old, and lives in Falmouth, MA, with his wife, Peggy, who is a molecular biologist, his daughter Genoa who is 18, his 16 year old son Kris, his Mother-in-law, Betty, and his pets—two cats, Timmy and Ty, and a dog named Slayter who loves anything that moves! Rachel talked to Yogi about how he became a marine engineer, and what he likes most about it. Read the interview »

Ron Comer
Ron Comer is the Scripps Resident Marine Technician for this expedition. Dan Scheirer has sailed with Ron on a number of occasions over the past 10 years. He enjoys Ron’s endless supply of sea stories. Dan asked Ron about his background, career and his responsibilities for this cruise. Ron is 54 years old and was born in San Diego. He has been married for 30 years and has 4 grown children, none of whom has any interest in going to sea. His wife, Elizabeth, is a 5th grade school teacher in Lemon Grove, CA. Ron's hobbies include collecting mineral specimens, gem stones, and fossils. He frequently collects new specimens in his travels around the world. Read the interview »

Dan Fornari - Chief Scientist
Dan Fornari is the chief scientist for this expedition. He is a Senior Scientist in the Geology and Geophysics Department at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and also Chief Scientist for Deep Submergence at WHOI. He is 49, and lives on Cape Cod, with his wife, CL, younger son, Simon (16), and his dog Hector. CL is an artist, writer, and gardener. Simon is a sophomore in high school, and an accomplished musician who plays the clarinet and saxophone in several bands at his school. Dan’s older son, Sasha, is 21 and is a junior at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Hector is 11 in human years, but going on 77 in dog years, and is missing going into work while Dan is at sea. Maya Tolstoy has known Dan for about 6 years, and they have worked together on a number of projects. She talked with him about how he became a marine scientist and his work at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Read the interview »

Maya Tolstoy
Maya Tolstoy is a 32 year old marine geophysicist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. She was born in New York City, but grew up in Scotland from the age of 8. She comes from a family of academics. Her father and two sisters are also scientists, and her mother is a theologian (someone who studies religion). Dan Fornari and Maya have been collaborating on several research projects over the past few years. Maya is a co-chief scientist on this expedition and she talked with Dan about her background and how she got interested in science. You can find out more details about her research on her web site. Read the interview »

Ron Wheatley - Chief Engineer
Ron Wheatley is the Chief Engineer on board RV Melville for this expedition. Ron is 48 years old and lives in northern Washington state, near British Columbia. He loves living in a wilderness setting, sharing the woods with his local herd of deer, trout fishing and hanging out with his neighbor's Malamute dog, “Misha”. On board RV Melville, Ron is the head of the engineering department that provides just about everything that we depend on to carry out our oceanographic research; water, electricity, propulsion, winches, etc. Read the interview »

Anja Marnewecke
Anja Marnewecke is the 3rd-Mate on RV Melville and has worked for Scripps Institution of Oceanography for about four years. She is twenty-five years old, and was born in South Africa where her family lived until she was eight years old. Her family moved to the US and lived in quite a few places out west, finally settling in California. Mike Perfit spoke with Anja to learn about her background and how she became a mate on an oceanographic research ship. Read the interview »

Clare Williams
Clare Williams is a 21-year-old geophysics student at the University of Leeds in England. This year she is studying marine geophysics at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) through the UC Education Abroad Program. Clare grew up on the northwest coast of England outside Liverpool and loves sailing and water sports. After Clare graduated from high school, she spent a year in Australia where she taught swimming and lifeguarding and enjoyed scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef. Clare’s parents and 16-year-old brother, Toby, live in England with their two family pets—striped cat named Tigger and a dog named Dilly. Clare is taking a seminar course on board taught by Rachel Haymon. Rachel and Clare talked this afternoon about how she is liking her first cruise and how she got interested in marine geology and geophysics. Read the interview »

Dan Scheirer
A desire to learn about the processes shaping the Earth and a love of travel led 35 year old Dan Scheirer to his career as a marine geophysicist at Brown University. He was raised in Pennsylvania and is a Phillies baseball fan. He went on his first scientific expedition to study the seafloor in 1989. Actually, his first cruise was also with Dan Fornari and Rachel Haymon here at the EPR between 9-10°N when they first mapped this part of the mid-ocean ridge with Argo I. Dan Scheirer earned his Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1994 for his research on gravity, magnetics, and seafloor morphology along the East Pacific Rise. Since that time, he has continued to do research on different parts of the mid-ocean ridge in the Indian, Atlantic and northeast Pacific Oceans. Recently, Dan married Allegra Hosford, a graduate student in marine geology at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Read the interview »

Mike Perfit
Mike Perfit is a Professor of Geology at the University of Florida, and a “Gator” fan. Mike and his wife Carol, a landscape architect, have two children; Ryan, a senior at Tulane University, and Melissa, who is graduating from high school in May. They have lived in Gainesville, Florida for the past 17 years since they moved from Australia where Mike was a Research Fellow at the Australian National University in Canberra. Erin Todd, a student who took several geology courses from Mike last year, interviewed Mike today to find out about his background, how he became a geologist and how he and Dan Fornari started doing research together. Read the interview »

Professor Rachel Haymon
Clare Williams is a watch stander on Rachel Haymon’s watch. Clare spoke with Rachel about her work and how she got started on a career in Oceanography. Rachel Haymon is a marine geologist and geochemist who studies the mid-ocean ridge, with an emphasis on hydrothermal processes. She is 46 years old and grew up in Louisiana. She has 3 brothers and 1 sister, and is the only scientist in her family. Rachel is married to Ken Macdonald, who is also an oceanographer. They are both professors at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and sometimes they work together on research cruises. Rachel and Ken do not have any children; instead, they have three cats named Tula, Gumbo and Simba. Rachel is fascinated with animals, enjoys observing wildlife, and goes hiking, fishing and bird watching whenever she can. Read the interview »

Captain Eric Buck
As a graduate student at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Maya Tolstoy sailed several times with Captain Eric Buck. She talked with Captain Buck this morning about his background and responsibilities as the Master of RV Melville. Captain Buck, 38, lives in San Diego, with his wife, Alysia, and their five-year-old daughter Caroline. His father was in the military so he moved around a lot as a child. He was born in Cuba and his family moved to San Diego in 1972. He has lived there ever since and considers San Diego his adopted home. Read the interview »