Fred Noel Spiess, a decorated US Navy officer and renowned oceanographer, died of cancer on 8 September 2006 in La Jolla, California. As an ocean engineer and scientist, Spiess opened new avenues for study of the oceans and left a rich legacy of technology and community-wide collaboration for ocean research.
Spiess was born in Oakland, California, on 25 December 1919. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1941, and at the same time received a commission from the US Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps. During World War II, he made a record 13 war patrols on submarines in the Pacific Ocean and was awarded Silver and Bronze Stars for gallantry in combat. He continued in the Naval Reserve following the war and retired with the rank of captain, serving as the deputy oceanographer of the navy from 1969 to 1974.
After the war Spiess attended Harvard University and received his MS in communication engineering in 1946. He then returned to UC Berkeley, where, under the supervision of Emilio Segrè, he conducted graduate studies on alpha decay problems and high-energy particle scattering and absorption. After completing his PhD in physics in 1951, he served on the staff of General Electric's Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory in Schenectady, New York. In 1952 he joined the Marine Physical Laboratory at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, where he spent the rest of his career. He served as director of MPL from 1958 to 1980. Spiess was acting director of Scripps in 1962–63 and director in 1964–65. He took a leave of absence from Scripps in 1974 and spent a year as scientific liaison officer for the US Office of Naval Research in London. Spiess directed the UC Institute of Marine Resources, headquartered at the University of California, San Diego, from 1980 to 1988. He held several positions in the UCSD academic senate and the UC statewide academic council and assembly, including serving as faculty representative on the UC Board of Regents in 1988–90. From 1998 to 2001, he chaired the academic task force that launched a new campus of the University of California at Merced. Through this work, Spiess shared with others his vision of the role and responsibilities of the faculty, which he saw as a distinctive and critical element in the success of UC.
Above all, Spiess was a seagoing scientist who led an average of two major oceanic expeditions a year for more than 40 years. His research interests included studies of long-range sound propagation and underwater communication, stable ocean platforms, acoustic navigation, deep-towed instrumentation, fine-scale properties of the deep-sea floor, plate tectonics and sea-floor spreading, and sea-floor geodesy.
To investigate the accuracy with which sound could be used to determine the direction of a target, Spiess, along with Fred Fisher and Phil Rudnick, developed a stable ocean platform, called the floating instrument platform, or FLIP, in the early 1960s. FLIP is a manned 110-meter spar buoy that can be towed on its side to an experimental site. Sections of the vessel then are flooded to create a vertically oriented stable platform with 90 meters of submerged hull. FLIP is still in use today, more than 40 years after its initial launch. At the time of his death, Spiess was involved in efforts to use the structure as a testing and demonstration platform in a new program of global ocean observations known as Ocean Research Interactive Observatory Networks.
As concepts of plate tectonics and sea-floor spreading were being developed in the 1960s, Spiess embarked on an effort to make detailed geophysical and oceanographic observations near the sea floor. He developed the “deep tow”—the use of electromechanical cables to allow towing of instrumentation packages at great depth (up to 7000 meters). The technique resulted in elucidation of the fine-scale bathymetric and geophysical structure of the sea floor and led to the discovery of hydrothermal venting at sea-floor spreading centers. Spiess provided leadership for interdisciplinary study of sea-floor spreading centers, and he was a driving force behind the creation of an NSF-sponsored special research initiative known as the RIDGE program, which continues to this day.
For the international ocean drilling program, Spiess developed a means for placing instrumentation in sea-floor boreholes using a wireline reentry system operated from standard oceanographic vessels. His approach allowed measurement of fluid circulation in the oceanic crust and facilitated the use of sensitive borehole seismometers to study global seismicity.
A key aspect of detailed sea-floor study is the ability to accurately locate objects at depth in the ocean. Beginning in the 1960s, Spiess was the first to create techniques for deep-sea acoustic navigation. With the advent of the satellite-based global positioning system in the 1980s and 1990s, Spiess envisioned and then created means for transferring centimeter-precision sea-surface positioning to monuments on the deep sea floor, thereby creating means for sea-floor geodetic studies. He demonstrated sea-floor plate tectonic motions by multiyear repeat measurements. The Spiess sea-floor geodetic approach has great value for understanding the potential for tsunami and earthquake generation at submerged plate boundaries.
Spiess had a well-reasoned and healthy respect for the sea and the organizational and team-building skills needed to survive its rigors, traits he first learned during his experience as a submarine officer during World War II and honed throughout his career. In his scientific work at sea, each operation was carefully planned, a chain of command established, and clear lines of communication maintained. His strong sense of rectitude was also in play on shore. He showed respect for both those with whom he worked closely and those with whom he had more casual contact. When organizing or chairing a meeting or research group, Spiess took extra care to ensure that every person present was allowed to contribute.
Spiess once said that his career involved “building outrageous things and using them successfully at sea.” He expanded the limits of what was possible to accomplish at sea, and he continued to spend time at sea until near the end of his life. He was a leader in the ocean sciences community and at UC, and those of us who knew him and worked with him will miss his keen insight and compassionate presence.