Fred Spiess
Dr. Fred Noel Spiess was a naval officer, oceanographer 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, and the use of acoustics for underwater navigation and geodetic positioning.
Education and career
Spiess was born in Oakland, California. He received an undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley and a master's degree from Harvard University. He received his doctorate in physics from UC Berkeley in 1951.After graduating in 1941 from Berkeley, he 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 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 in 1965 and the Maurice Ewing Medal in 1983. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1985. He was a fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, 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 worked on the creation of R/P FLIP, a unique 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. Spiess collaborated with Fred Fisher and Phillip Rudnick in development of the vessel.FLIP has been used to study the acoustics of whales and other marine mammals, heat exchange between the ocean and the atmosphere, and the effects of seismic waves on water.
Deep Tow
The development of the echo sounder for seafloor mapping was refined during World War II. Soon research ships crossing the oceans outlined the mid-ocean ridges, fracture zones, 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, the first-ever geologic mapping of the median rift valley of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.