Dr. Fred Noel Spiess (December 25, 1919 – September 8, 2006) was a naval officer,

oceanographer Oceanography (), also known as oceanology and ocean science, is the scientific study of the oceans. It is an Earth science, which covers a wide range of topics, including ecosystem dynamics; ocean currents, waves, and geophysical fluid dynamic ...

and marine explorer. His work created new advances in marine technology including the FLIP Floating Instrument Platform, the Deep Tow vehicle for study of the

seafloor The seabed (also known as the seafloor, sea floor, ocean floor, and ocean bottom) is the bottom of the ocean The ocean (also the sea or the world ocean) is the body of salt water that covers approximately 70.8% of the surface of Earth an ...

, and the use of acoustics for underwater navigation and geodetic positioning.

Education and career

Spiess (pronounced SPEES) was born in

Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

. He received an undergraduate degree from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

and a master's degree from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

. He received his doctorate in

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

from UC Berkeley in 1951. After graduating in 1941 from Berkeley, he received a commission from the

US Naval Reserve The United States Navy Reserve (USNR), known as the United States Naval Reserve from 1915 to 2005, is the Reserve Component (RC) of the United States Navy. Members of the Navy Reserve, called Reservists, are categorized as being in either the Se ...

Officers Training Corps. During World War II, he made a record 13 war patrols on submarines in the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contin ...

and was awarded

Silver Silver is a chemical element with the symbol Ag (from the Latin ', derived from the Proto-Indo-European ''h₂erǵ'': "shiny" or "white") and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical ...

and

Bronze Stars The Bronze Star Medal (BSM) is a United States Armed Forces decoration awarded to members of the United States Armed Forces for either heroic achievement, heroic service, meritorious achievement, or meritorious service in a combat zone. Wh ...

for gallantry in combat. He continued in the Naval Reserve from 1946–56 and retired with the rank of captain, serving as the Deputy Oceanographer of the Navy from 1969 to 1974. Spiess' method for reckoning the position of an object from successive sonar contacts is still a standard for training of US Naval Officers. Spiess joined the Marine Physical Laboratory at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1952 and served as director of the laboratory from 1958 to 1980. He served as director of the Scripps Institution from 1964 to 1965. Spiess was awarded the

John Price Wetherill Medal The John Price Wetherill Medal was an award of the Franklin Institute. It was established with a bequest given by the family of John Price Wetherill (1844–1906) on April 3, 1917. On June 10, 1925, the Board of Managers voted to create a silver ...

in 1965 and the

Maurice Ewing Medal Two international geophysical societies offer awards each year which are named in honor of Maurice Ewing; these are the American Geophysical Union and the Society of Exploration Geophysicists: __TOC__ AGU Ewing Medal The Maurice Ewing Medal is awa ...

in 1983. He was elected to the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...

in 1985. He was a fellow of the

Acoustical Society of America The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is an international scientific society founded in 1929 dedicated to generating, disseminating and promoting the knowledge of acoustics and its practical applications. The Society is primarily a voluntary org ...

, and was awarded their Pioneers of Underwater Acoustics Medal in 1985 for "his leadership and insight in applying acoustics to study the ocean and the sea floor, for his many ingenious scientific and engineering contributions; for his introduction of students, scientists, and many others to underwater acoustics."

R/P FLIP

Spiess is probably best remembered for his role in the creation of R/P FLIP (Floating Instrument Platform), a unique 355-ft long research platform that is towed to the work area and then rotated to a vertical position to form a stable observation post in deep water. FLIP has remained in use for more than forty years primarily for physical oceanographic and acoustic experiments. Spiess collaborated with Fred Fisher and Phillip Rudnick in development of the vessel. FLIP has been used to study the acoustics of

whales Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully aquatic placental marine mammals. As an informal and colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea, i.e. all cetaceans apart from dolphins and ...

and other marine mammals, heat exchange between the ocean and the atmosphere, and the effects of

seismic waves A seismic wave is a wave of acoustic energy that travels through the Earth. It can result from an earthquake, volcanic eruption, magma movement, a large landslide, and a large man-made explosion that produces low-frequency acoustic energy. ...

on water.

Deep Tow

The development of the

echo sounder Echo sounding or depth sounding is the use of sonar for ranging, normally to determine the depth of water (bathymetry). It involves transmitting acoustic waves into water and recording the time interval between emission and return of a pulse; ...

for seafloor mapping was refined during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. Soon research ships crossing the oceans outlined the

mid-ocean ridges A mid-ocean ridge (MOR) is a seafloor mountain system formed by plate tectonics. It typically has a depth of about and rises about above the deepest portion of an ocean basin. This feature is where seafloor spreading takes place along a diverg ...

fracture zones Fracture is the separation of an object or material into two or more pieces under the action of stress. The fracture of a solid usually occurs due to the development of certain displacement discontinuity surfaces within the solid. If a displa ...

, and deep-sea trenches. Because these devices sent out broad-beam sound waves from the sea surface, details of the seafloor shape remained obscured by fuzzy smeared-out echoes. Ship navigation was so inaccurate that features smaller than a few kilometers across could not be mapped with any certainty. Spiess’ solution to the resolution and mapping problem was twofold; bring the echo sounder close to the seafloor and locate the device within a seabed survey navigation network. During the 1960s, Spiess and his engineers at the Marine Physical Laboratory of Scripps developed the Deep Tow instrument for mapping the deep seafloor from an altitude of tens of meters. The deep-tow instrument used a narrow-beam downward-looking echosounder, side-scan sonars, and subbottom profiling system to map features in unprecedented detail, e.g., geologic observations that approached that of outcrop mapping for land geologists. Evolution of the Deep Tow to improve seafloor mapping saw the addition of a magnetometer, cameras, video, water samplers, plankton nets, and other instruments as more varied seafloor environments were examined. The Deep Tow instrument was notably used in

Project FAMOUS Project FAMOUS (French-American Mid-Ocean Undersea Study) was the first-ever marine scientific exploration by manned submersibles of a diverging tectonic plate boundary on a mid-ocean ridge. It took place between 1971 and 1974, with a multi-nati ...

, the first-ever geologic mapping of the median

rift valley A rift valley is a linear shaped lowland between several highlands or mountain ranges created by the action of a geologic rift. Rifts are formed as a result of the pulling apart of the lithosphere due to extensional tectonics. The linear d ...

of the

Mid-Atlantic Ridge The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is a mid-ocean ridge (a divergent or constructive plate boundary) located along the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, and part of the longest mountain range in the world. In the North Atlantic, the ridge separates the North ...

Acoustic transponders

Spiess recognized that obtaining detailed images of the seafloor was only one component that is necessary for making geologic maps of the deep-sea floor. The position of the Deep Tow vehicle must be known to within a few meters, thus leading to the development of the first seafloor acoustic

transponder In telecommunications, a transponder is a device that, upon receiving a signal, emits a different signal in response. The term is a blend of ''transmitter'' and ''responder''. In air navigation or radio frequency identification, a flight trans ...

positioning system for working in deep water. The acoustic transponder capability eventually evolved into instruments for acoustic

geodetic Geodesy ( ) is the Earth science of accurately measuring and understanding Earth's figure (geometric shape and size), orientation in space, and gravity. The field also incorporates studies of how these properties change over time and equivale ...

measurements by combining the technologies of seafloor acoustic beacons with shipboard GPS positioning. This geodetic system has been successfully deployed for directly measuring the direction of movement and speed of the oceanic

Juan de Fuca Juan de Fuca (10 June 1536, Cefalonia 23 July 1602, Cefalonia)Greek Consulate of Vancouver,Greek Pioneers: Juan de Fuca. was a Greek pilot who served PhilipII of Spain. He is best known for his claim to have explored the Strait of Aniánnow k ...

lithospheric plate and for documenting movement on submarine landslides.

RISE expedition and black smoker hydrothermal vents

During the mid 1970s, several Deep Tow cruises to the mouth of the

Gulf of California The Gulf of California ( es, Golfo de California), also known as the Sea of Cortés (''Mar de Cortés'') or Sea of Cortez, or less commonly as the Vermilion Sea (''Mar Bermejo''), is a marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean that separates the Baja C ...

at 21^o N resulted in production of a geologic map of the

East Pacific Rise The East Pacific Rise is a mid-ocean rise (termed an oceanic rise and not a mid-ocean ridge due to its higher rate of spreading that results in less elevation increase and more regular terrain), a divergent tectonic plate boundary located alon ...

(EPR) spreading ridge axis. The map was then used as the base for conducting diving programs using both French and US crewed submersibles. These were the CYAMEX and RISE expeditions; the latter led by Spiess and

Ken Macdonald Kenneth Donald John Macdonald, Baron Macdonald of River Glaven, (born 4 January 1953) is a British lawyer and politician who served as Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) of England and Wales from 2003 to 2008. In that office he was head of ...

. One of Spiess' projects during the RISE expedition (with Bruce Luyendyk) was to use the crewed submersible

ALVIN Alvin may refer to: Places Canada *Alvin, British Columbia United States *Alvin, Colorado *Alvin, Georgia *Alvin, Illinois * Alvin, Michigan *Alvin, Texas * Alvin, Wisconsin, a town *Alvin (community), Wisconsin, an unincorporated community Other ...

for seafloor

gravity In physics, gravity () is a fundamental interaction which causes mutual attraction between all things with mass or energy. Gravity is, by far, the weakest of the four fundamental interactions, approximately 1038 times weaker than the stro ...

measurements across the axis of spreading. The diving expedition ultimately resulted in the discovery of high temperature black-smoker vents for which Spiess and his coauthors received the

Newcomb Cleveland Prize The Newcomb Cleveland Prize of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is annually awarded to author(s) of outstanding scientific paper published in the Research Articles or Reports sections of ''Science''. Established in 192 ...

for the best paper published in ''Science'' magazine in 1980.

Death

Spiess died September 8, 2006 in

San Diego, California San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United Stat ...

, of

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...

References

* Pearce, Jeremy. (2006, September 25). ''Fred N. Spiess, 86; Helped Design Marine Station''. The New York Times, p. A27
Obituary notice, Scripps Institution of Oceanography News
{{DEFAULTSORT:Spiess, Fred American oceanographers Scripps Institution of Oceanography faculty 1919 births 2006 deaths Harvard University alumni People from Oakland, California People from San Diego University of California, Berkeley alumni Deaths from cancer in California Marine geophysicists United States Navy personnel of World War II