Call of the Ocean

BODEGA BAY

Marine ecologist Susan Williams has had a lifelong love affair with the ocean, from the time she was a child visiting the beaches of New Jersey and Maryland.

"My parents took me to the ocean for family vacations. I loved the power of it and all the critters that washed up on shore," said Williams, a native of York, Pa. "I have wanted to be an oceanographer since the second grade."

She has dived in the frigid waters of Alaska, studied coral reefs in the oceans of both hemispheres and has spent weeks at a time living underwater in the temperate waters of the Caribbean in a cramped habitat with three other scientists.

"Living underwater was like being a fish," she said.

The Hydrolab where she lived 65 feet down was at the head of a big underwater canyon.

"I had visited that canyon for something like every day for two years, diving from the surface, so I thought I knew it blindfolded," Williams said. "But I didn't see the kinds of biology, the animal behavior, the ecology, until I was underwater for 24 hours a day.

"I saw giant snails, as big as a large fist, come up out of the sand and bulldoze seaweeds and the sea grasses I was studying. The snails disrupted the growth, and I would have never known that if I had not lived underwater."

Today, Williams is as much at home in her office at the Bodega Marine Laboratory as she is on the pitching deck of the lab's new research vessel, the 42-foot Mussel Point.

The Bodega Bay lab plays an important role in science, Williams said. Most marine scientists find their calling "because of a lab experience sometime in their career," she said.

It was true for her: As an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, she attended a program at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Maine, and "I was hooked."

"You get to put your hand in the ocean, you get to figure out if you like to be salty and cold," she said. "You learn to plumb an aquarium, how to change the spark plugs on a boat, how to not fall overboard, all those things that you can't learn in a classroom."

She is beginning her fifth year as director of the lab, which is a research and teaching arm of UC Davis.

Williams is leading the lab in redefining its direction, focusing on broader marine research that will cover entire ecosystems rather than individual scientific topics.

"The research is moving toward ecology, and that is entirely appropriate," said Jim Clegg, who was the lab's director for 13 years and remains as a researcher and professor at the facility. "This is a very special natural setting."

At the same time, Williams is trying to put more energy into the lab's teaching program, hiring new faculty to serve 1,000 students a year at its remote Bodega Head campus.

"It is a challenge to have classrooms there. The students have to be housed, but we are trying to drum up more interest from students," said Randy Southard, UC Davis associate dean for environmental sciences. "There are a lot of opportunities out there."

Sprawling facility

The lab sits on 364 acres on Bodega Head and has its own marine preserve in Horseshoe Cove. The sprawling classroom and research facility employs eight resident faculty members, nine postgraduate researchers and 100 postdoctoral researchers. It has a $2.5 million operating budget and a $9 million research budget. Williams, 54, earns $107,400 a year as director.

She has a corner office in the lab's administration building, appropriately overlooking both the ocean and the grassy coastal plain, which she considers areas of equal importance as the lab undertakes studies "on both sides of the tide line."

For Williams, the lab also has an important public role to play, and she wants to break down the barriers between it and the community.

The lab has 20 docents who conduct public tours Friday afternoons and school tours throughout the week, drawing about 12,000 visitors a year.

Public role

The lab is also becoming more active in public policy-making, providing the science that legislators need to make decisions, Williams said.

"We have tours for legislators and I end up testifying a fair amount in the state Legislature. I attended a recent conference for (Rep. Lynn) Woolsey and (Sen. Barbara) Boxer for a marine sanctuary bill. I helped provide the science."

Williams believes more scientists should take such a public role. "Scientists have to realize how important it is to get the information that we publish in these esoteric journals to the policy-makers, to make these difficult and complicated decisions."

Ocean pollution is a growing problem and invasive plants and animals are threatening the health of native marine species, Williams said. Both factors affect the ocean's prime role in global climate change.

"It is a pivotal time," she said. "We have to play a role in turning the tide on environmental problems."

Williams received her undergraduate degree in biology from the University of Michigan, a graduate degree in biological oceanography at the University of Alaska, and a doctorate in botany and marine biology from the University of Maryland.

Her husband of 17 years, Bruce Nyden, has supported her career by following her from marine lab to marine lab and taking odd jobs.

"He has been remarkable in supporting me, working as a cabinetmaker, for computer companies, as an underwater photography instructor and as a dive instructor," she said. "He is an adaptable guy."

Williams' specialty is eel grasses, whose roots stabilize the ocean bed and provide habitat for such creatures as lobsters.

It is why she dove in the frigid waters of Alaska.

"The water was ... slushy with ice and there were icebergs," she said. "I stayed in the water for an hour, that was all I could stay in. And I also did cruises on a research ice breaker to the Arctic Circle as a graduate student."

It was also why Williams was an "aquanaut," serving as science director and conducting her own research in the Hydrolab in the waters off St. Croix, part of the U.S. Virgin Islands. The lab was only 8 by 11 feet, had bunks for three people but housed four, and was supplied with air and food from a ship anchored above.

It allowed divers to remain underwater for hours at a time, and to dive to 150 feet without having to go through time-consuming decompression to avoid the bends.

It gave the scientists an unprecedented view of the ocean they were studying, including a rare sighting of a "flashlight fish."

"Flashlight fish have a luminescent pouch under their eyes. They blink this pouch on and off and they look like a flashlight coming up," Williams said. "You could never observe them in the wild, but living in the habitat you could."

Unnatural environment

She did four tours in the Hydrolab, each one seven days, which was very challenging even for an avid diver like herself.

"We are not fish, so it is a very unnatural environment for humans to be in," she said. "It is hard on your body.

"My hair never dried. I was lucky because many aquanauts develop skin problems, lung problems or ear problems because you never dry out. The oxygen and air under pressure has a high percentage of oxygen saturation, so some get what is called aquanaut's cough."

Williams said she was in her 30s then, but she has thought about doing it again. "It was one of the most exciting things I've ever done. I was truly part of the habitat, and it opened my eyes."

The Hydrolab, where she was science director, also gave her expertise she draws on daily in her Bodega Bay post, Williams said.

"I was in a highly technical operation. It involved life support, it involved boats, it involved diving and diving training, it involved safety, proposal review, facilitating the scientists' getting their work done, collecting samples and (studying) the impact on the environment.

"I don't believe you can be a marine lab director and be ignorant of the technology we use to probe the ocean. That kind of experience makes me better qualified to be a marine lab director."

You can reach Staff Writer Bob Norberg at 521-5206 or bnorberg@pressdemocrat.com.