Fred Grassle
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution announces with great sorrow the death of former employee Fred Grassle on July 6 at Regency Jewish Heritage Nursing Center in Somerset, New Jersey. He was 78.
Son of the late John K. Grassle and Norah I. (Fleck) Grassle, Fred was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and raised in Bay Village, Ohio. He graduated from Bay Village High School in 1957.
Fred received a degree in zoology from Yale University in 1961. During his studies, he spent a summer as an intern at the WHOI.
Fred earned his PhD from Duke University in 1967 and then completed a Fulbright Fellowship at the University of Queensland in Australia, studying succession on the reef crest at Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef
After his fellowship, Fred joined WHOI as a full-time assistant scientist in 1969. He was granted tenure in 1977 and in 1983, was promoted to senior scientist. Fred’s research at WHOI focused on deep-sea biodiversity and included pioneering work on hydrothermal vent ecosystems. The National Geographic Society documented one of the early expeditions to the hydrothermal vents discovered in 1977 at the Galapagos Rift—of which Fred was one of the chief scientists—in “Dive to the Edge of Creation.”
In 1989, Fred joined the faculty at Rutgers University’s Cook College to establish the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences. He helped to raise funds for a new building to house the institute while expanding the research and teaching faculty and conducting his own research. This included an analysis of ocean dumping that led to the end of sludge disposal in US waters.
He later helped establish one of the first ocean observing stations off the coast of New Jersey and was one of the founders of the Census of Marine Life, which led to the creation of Ocean Biogeographic Information System to provide a searchable database of data on distribution of marine life.
Fred retired in 2012 after 23 years at Rutgers University.
Among other honors, he was awarded the Japan Prize in 2013, the Benjamin Franklin Medal in 2009, the Grand Prix des Sciences de la Mer Albert de Monaco, and the ASLO A.C. Redfield Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011.
Fred has had six species and one genus of polychaetes, three species of mollusks, and three species of crustaceans named after him.
He was the husband of Judith H. (Payne) Grassle for 53 years. In addition to his wife, he leaves his son, John Thomas Grassle; and his sister, Norah Jean Bunts.
Further information will be posted when available.
(Information for this obituary is from The Falmouth Enterprise)
Some remembrances of Fred from his former colleagues:
Fred Grassle and I met about 1990 when he was a faculty member at WHOI and I began working summers in the Marine Policy Center. While Fred moved to Rutgers in 1993 to found the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, we would get together during the summer, because Fred retained his home on School Street and liked to spend as much time in the village as possible. Fred chaired the National Research Council committee that authored the 1995 report Understanding Marine Biodiversity. On July 2nd 1996, Fred and I were chatting upstairs in Swift House. He was frustrated that the US government had failed to respond to the recommendations in the report, which it had invited and paid for. During that conversation, we decided we needed to enlarge rather than shrink the ambitions of the report and came up with the idea of a global “Census of the Fishes.” In fact, the idea was always to span most all marine life, but I thought Census of the Fishes had a good ring to it. We vetted the idea with John Steele, Mike Sissenwine, and several other experts in WHOI, MBL, and the NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center. In short, everyone said we were crazy but no one said do not try. So, we tried, and succeeded. The Census of Marine Life formally launched in 2000 and concluded in 2010 after 540 expeditions, countless discoveries included 5000 new species, and an expenditure of $650 million, the largest program in the history of marine biology. Fred served as founding chair and brought deep knowledge and wide networks. At the outset, he remarked that he was “comfortable with ambiguity”, and that spirit allowed the organic growth of the program. Many of the formative ideas for the program came from the WHOI community, often grown in Fred’s yard on School Street.
–Jesse H. Ausubel, Adjunct Scientist, WHOI
I first met Fred in the summer of 1986, when I drove to Woods Hole from Montreal to meet with him as a potential advisor. I had no idea what he would be like – this was pre-internet days – so I did not even know what he looked like. I found him in his office in the basement of Redfield, I big bear of a man who beamed with a smile and stood to offer me the gentlest handshake I had ever encountered. “Please have a seat” he said, and my career path was set. We spoke for an hour or two, went to the Kidd for lunch, and I knew Fred’s lab at WHOI was the place for me. My mother called me that winter to say someone from WHOI had called to say I had been accepted in the Joint Program. I called Fred, excited to tell him. He chuckled and said that it was he who had called and spoken to my mother.
When I came back to begin in the Joint Program the next year he sent me to Bermuda as an advance party for the cruise. The ship’s Chief Engineer assured me everything was on schedule for a PISCES launch system. I called Fred and told him as much, though I had my doubts, and Fred flew down. The launch system was not ready, not even close, and Fred knew it the minute he saw it. But he shrugged it off and we spent the next week waiting in Bermuda. We played pool, we played Pigmania, and we waited. His patience was endless. When the cruise finally left and started to get samples, but on one dive one of the ALVIN box corers washed off the sub. I looked at Fred who grimaced briefly and then smiled and shrugged. We would figure something out (and actually found the corer on a subsequent dive). That gentle patience – and never an unkind word – has been a constant influence in my life, and I have tried to emulate it with my own staff and students. Fred was the essence of a scholar, mentor, and friend. The ocean has lost a great friend and so have we, but we are fortunate to have his tremendous science legacy and many great memories.
I write these recollections from my cabin 150 km offshore on a Canadian research ship. Fittingly, we are out here chasing mud. Fred would be pleased.
–Dr. Paul Snelgrove
Network Director, NSERC Canadian Healthy Oceans Network II
