. REUBEN LASKER: A Remembrance. 



Reuben with Walterio Garcia, Jacobo Melcer, 



and Paul E. Smith aboard the research vessel 



A Humboldt in 1975. 



Opp. page, left: In foul weather gear aboard the 

 Gniversity of Alaska's research vessel, Alpha 

 Helix, during a research cruise to the Pribilofs in 

 1 982 to study groundfish. 



Opp. page, right: Showing off the Huntsman 

 Medal for Excellence in Biological Oceanog- 

 raphy awarded him in 1983 by the Canadian 

 government's Bedford Institute of 

 Oceanography. 



ciently they used their food. Since no one offered to 

 provide him with live animals to work on, Reuben 

 arranged to go to sea on the Scripps T-boat (the 

 U.S. Army's designation for Transportation), an 80- 

 foot vessel with a 3-man crew. Dosed massively 

 with Dramamine, the former Brooklynite who never 

 learned to swim, was taught how to catch euphau- 

 siids by Scripps researchers Elizabeth and Brian 

 Boden. During one particularly eventful trip, 

 Reuben was 10 miles off San Diego where the vessel 

 had been stopped to deploy a plankton net. Alone 

 on deck, in heavy seas and without a life jacket, 

 Reuben remembered the ship giving a sudden 

 lurch that propelled him forward over the chain 

 railing. Fortunately for Reuben he managed to save 

 himself by grabbing a projecting object as the ship 

 steamed ahead at 1 knots away from where he 

 would have been hurled into the sea. 



Until he finally figured out the correct dosage of 

 Dramamine, Reuben was very susceptible to sea 

 sickness. Although it was necessary to go to sea to 

 collect live specimens, Reuben preferred to keep 

 his sea trips as brief as possible. Serendipitously, he 

 located an area of the ocean in the lee of Pt. Loma 

 which not only produced euphausiids and fish 

 larvae in abundance but also had the virtue of being 

 relatively calm. This became his favorite spot for 

 collecting specimens and in years to come became 

 well known to his colleagues as Lasker's Lake. 



The postdoctoral year went quickly with 

 Reuben who was working on the energy balance of 

 euphausiids and looking for a job. A notable event 



for the Laskers during this time was the birth of their 

 daughter, Pamela. 



It was also during Reuben's sojourn at Scripps 

 that a meeting took place which had important 

 implications for his future. Through a mutual friend 

 he met John C. Marr, Director of the U.S. Depart- 

 ment of the Interior's Bureau of Commercial Fish- 

 eries, South Pacific Fisheries Investigation, who had 

 recently relocated his laboratory in the old Direc- 

 tor's residence on the Scripps campus. Marr was 

 interested in Reuben's work on euphausiids, and 

 some months later when the laboratory was reorga- 

 nized he asked Reuben to head up a physiology 

 section. Meanwhile, Reuben had accepted a job at 

 Compton Junior College; although it provided him 

 with his first taste of teaching, he informed the dean 

 that he would not be renewing his contract because 

 he wanted to return to research. At the end of the 

 academic year, the Lasker family left Compton and 

 returned to La Jolla, where Reuben had been 

 granted a Lalor Faculty Fellowship at the Scripps 

 Institution of Oceanography. In the interim Marr was 

 able to complete the arrangements for Reuben's 

 recruitment. Accordingly, in June 1958, Reuben 

 entered on duty at the federal fisheries laboratory in 

 La Jolla, as a fishery research biologist. Thus began 

 a creative, productive partnership, an association 

 that lasted through numerous federal reorganiza- 

 tions and changes in research emphases, and 

 which endured until Reuben's death some 30 years 

 later. 



In establishing a Physiology Program and 



378 



