The many minor rumblings of the earth rarely penetrate our awareness
until we are struck by their startling power. For Eddie Bernard ’69, those
subtle ebbs, flows and eruptions hold fascination because he, more than most,
knows the life-saving value of prediction in reducing the untold devastation and
human suffering that can result.
One of the world’s leading experts on tsunamis learned to love the ocean – in all its glory and ferocity – as a boy on the beach of Bolivar Peninsula. Today, he is director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) in Seattle, Wash.
Eddie Bernard remembers the fishing trips he took with his father. “That’s where I developed my fascination with waves and decided I would become an oceanographer,” he said. He recalls a crabbing trip when he was seven and a lesson he learned from longtime fishermen. A hurricane had blown through. “There was just a gazillion crabs out there,” he said. “I remember my father asking the oldtimers, ‘What’s the deal?’ and they said after a hurricane and a full moon, there will always be lots of crabs. I learned a very good lesson that day – the connection between environmental events and the natural response to it. Some experiences in your life are like that. They stick with you.”
Bernard wanted to explore the undercurrents beneath that link. That voyage took him from Lamar to Texas A&M, as a graduate student, to Hawaii, where he began his pioneering life’s work in tsunami research, and eventually to Seattle, Wash., where he currently lives.
After graduation from Lamar, Bernard hunted for oil as a geophysicist with Pan American Petroleum Company – “I tried it for three months and was bored to death, quite frankly” – before beginning graduate study at Texas A&M. “I wanted to get out and see the world, get on ships and travel,” he said. In 1970, he received a commission with NOAA Corps as an officer and spent the first three years aboard the NOAA Research Vessel RESEARCHER. After his tour with the National Ocean Survey, he applied for a research position with NOAA’s Joint Tsunami Research Effort in Honolulu. He earned a doctorate in physical oceanography from Texas A&M in 1976, and 1977 saw him accept the directorship of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Ewa Beach, Hawaii. “Hawaii and tsunami was a good combination. I liked both of the subjects, and I was able to go scuba diving every weekend,” he said. “It was a great tour. I met some really talented scientists who influenced my research.”
In just 10 years after graduation from Lamar, Bernard was appointed deputy director of NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle and began a deep ocean tsunami observational program.
He was on the fast track. “I guess that came about because of my interest in leadership,” he said, “which definitely came about during my time at Lamar.” Bernard was student body vice president and chose physics over math his junior year. “The mathematics track was just too theoretical,” he said. “I couldn’t quite connect the knowledge with the world we live in, but physics did that.”
Two people who had significant influence on his future aspirations were Lamar Professors Roy H. Biser and Joseph F. Pizzo, both of whom nurtured a love for the field of physics. During Bernard’s senior year at South Park High School, Roy Biser gave an enthusiastic lecture on the virtues of physics as a career. That lecture prompted Bernard to take Biser’s freshman physics class at Lamar. “I was fortunate to have classes with Joe Pizzo, who made physics exciting. He was such a great speaker, and then he would go out and drink a beer with us. That’s how you really got to know about physics, was to talk with him after class.”
His wasn’t a college career of all work and no play. An optics class inspired the Sigma Phi Epsilon member to create a little social activity. “We had a fraternity party that we called the ‘mattress and movie party.’ We rented some sci-fi movies with big monsters killing everybody, and we used mirrors to project the movie onto the ceiling. Everybody stretched out on mattresses, and we drank from straws. It certainly stimulated interest in mirrors and optics.”
Eddie met Shirley Fielder ’70 before a speech he was to give while campaigning for student body president. “I was standing outside the old gymnasium going over some notes. I was a little concerned because I was a Greek talking to independents about voting for me. Shirley, one of the independents, saw me as she approached the gym and said, ‘Don’t be nervous, we’re all friends here.’ That evening turned out to be a real challenge. Little did I know that she was my opponent’s campaign manager who later orchestrated his victory. Since our marriage, I like to say, ‘I lost the election, but I won the girl.’” Shirley later became a member of Alpha Chi Omega sorority and earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education. The couple have one daughter, Beth, who graduated from the University of Washington in 2000. They recently celebrated their 35th wedding anniversary.
In 1982 Bernard became director of PMEL, leading a staff of 175 scientists, engineers and technicians. During his 24-year tenure, he has created a spirit of camaraderie while leading purposeful research at PMEL. “My style has been to develop mutual respect among our people regardless of stature. This turns out to be practical because harmony is needed in the hostile environment of the ocean. We’re asking people to leave their homes and, under adverse conditions, to do a lot of difficult things. We must make sure we let them know that we appreciate all the sacrifices they’ve made for research.”
“All the projects we have here have a common goal. We’re here to serve society and benefit the taxpayer,” Bernard said. His motivational style has worked. Under his leadership, NOAA scientists developed the world’s largest ocean observing system for the detection and forecast of El Niños; discovered the world’s first deep ocean, underwater volcanic eruption; created the world’s first fisheries forecast; developed science and technology to produce the world’s first forecast of tsunami impacts; and pioneered thetechnology to disseminate real-time oceanographic data to the world via the Internet.
Through more than 2,000 funded proposals during the past 24 years, Bernard has been responsible for the accountability of approximately $650 million. His staff has spent more than 12,000 days at sea on oceanographic research vessels and published more than 2000 research articles.
The lab’s suite of projects investigates ocean climate dynamics, fisheries oceanography, El Niño, tsunamis, and underwater volcanoes.
Bernard expects exciting discoveries from research into the microbial world around volcanic vents on the ocean floor. “It’s just one of these fields that’s emerging with huge implications for the pharmaceutical industry and, perhaps, the refining industry. The cycle of life on the seafloor has several implications for energy programs. Sulfuric acid is a bad actor here on land, but down on the seafloor sulfuric acid is a source of food. There are worms that live on the sulfur. We may find that these microbes have properties that can make the drugs of the future more effective.” He likes the idea that this research combines the earth and the ocean interface – a theme throughout PMEL’s research. Bernard sees physics and society meeting and blending in the effort to coexist with the environment. “We have one planet, and if we don’t take care of it, and we don’t understand it, then we could be inadvertently harming it.”
He says that the biggest problem facing oceanography is the lack of data. “We have lots of models and lots of theories, but we have precious few measurements that can actually help us understand what’s going on in the ocean.” Bernard sees the lab’s role as making measurements easier and cheaper so scientists can record data at a reasonable cost. “The basic premise, which goes back to Physics 101, is if you measure over time with great precision, then you can put together a theoretical framework to predict,” he said.
Until the tragedy of Dec. 26, 2004, tsunami research was a low priority in the United States to the point of being targeted for termination. Bernard found it very difficult to obtain support for a deep ocean measurement system because everyone would ask the same question, “When was the last time someone died from a tsunami in the United States?”
“It was a valid question to ask,” he said, “but you just need to know that we’re operating on geological time scales here, and we don’t have the data to make those kinds of predictions.” For Bernard, watching the slow deterioration of that effort was his greatest challenge as lab director during the last 24 years. “I was under pressure to redirect the tsunami research dollars to other activities. The most difficult thing I had to do was address the lack of appreciation for the nature of the tsunami hazard and try to convince people that this was a problem worth studying. It shouldn’t be at the top of the list, but it should not be at zero either. I was watching some great research being starved to death.”
That all changed Dec. 26, 2004. Bernard had been expecting a big earthquake to generate a tsunami in Alaska, a repeat of the 1964 Alaska tsunami. “Never did I dream of anything the size of the Sumatra tsunami. It was such a powerful tsunami and had such a horrific impact that it validated globally the need for tsunami research.”
At the behest of the U.S. State Department, Bernard recently led the U.S. delegations in Perth, Australia, and Hyderabad, India, to design and establish an Indian Ocean tsunami warning system. “The tsunami modeling and measurement standards that we have developed at PMEL will be used in other oceans,” he said. An international consortium of nations is being formed to adopt the Pacific Ocean tsunami warning system that has been based on research conducted at PMEL during the past 30 years.
Study continues. “The excitement in earthquake monitoring now,” he said, “is GPS technology. Traditional seismic instruments can’t sense the signature of slow earthquake phenomena, but GPS receivers are detecting these and other tectonic fluctuations. I think this technology will enable us to monitor the earth in ways we haven’t in the past, and that’s good for science.”
PMEL scientists have also used pressure technology, which is the brains of the tsunami detection system, to measure the contraction of a volcanic caldera during a volcanic eruption on the seafloor. “When you see all of that happen simultaneously two miles below the surface, that’s a huge revelation,” Bernard said. “I think the monitoring of underwater volcanoes using this technology is an important contribution that we have made – one of those serendipitous discoveries.”
Discovery keeps Bernard coming back for more. He enjoys developing research that spans hundreds of investigative areas in the world’s oceans and atmosphere. “People ask me, ‘How do you prepare for the next day?’ and I say, ‘A good night’s sleep.’ I never know what’s going to happen when I walk into my office, and that’s what I love about the job. It’s like going to school every day. Everybody’s learning new things, sharing disciplines. And we’re doing that in a constructive way. We’re trying to save people’s lives and understand the environment. It gives you a special feeling when you’re not only creating new knowledge, but also applying this knowledge for humanitarian reasons. That’s a combination that really appeals to me,” he said.
Research ideas have their own cycle of life, and Bernard witnesses this every day in Seattle’s lush climate as well as deep in the ocean. He hopes to participate in the cycle of knowledge, too. Another career goal is motivating people through teaching. “I so admire people like Roy Biser and Joe Pizzo. It would be gratifying to devote more time to the educational aspects of tsunamis.” His recent appointment as affiliate professor at the University of Washington may provide the opportunity.
During his 35-year federal career, Bernard has received two Presidential Awards for distinguished service to the nation from Presidents William Clinton (1993) and George W. Bush (2002). In 2004, PMEL received a U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medal recognizing the successful transfer from research to operations of the technology to detect tsunamis in the deep ocean. More recently, on Dec. 6, 2005, in Washington D.C., Eddie Bernard and six other scientists and engineers from PMEL were each awarded a U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medal recognizing their research and development in creating a tsunami forecasting capability. Bernard continues to dedicate his efforts to applying science for the public good.
