March, 2000 
SCAMIT Newsletter 
Vol. 18, No. 11 
drilling. Only recently have we been focusing 
on the effect of storm water run off on the 
environment. Our reevaluation was published 
in the Rice University Monograph Series. 
One day Herb Ward called me and asked for 
me to come to the Kennedy Space Center to 
advise them on the effect of space shuttle take¬ 
offs on the marine environment. NASA had not 
considered that cooling water from the lift-off 
flows into the estuary adjacent to the pad. I 
trained their benthic staff with the help of Tony 
Phillips and Tom Gerlinger. There was some 
effect but this did not stop NASA. 
I became associated with Atlantic Scientific 
(no longer in existence, the owner died many 
years ago). Russ Bellmer had worked for them 
also. He specialized in the smaller contracts. 
Navy homeporting was one area and I did work 
in LA-LB Harbors, San Francisco Bay, and 
Newport, Rhode Island (I borrowed a bottom 
sampler from Wayne Davis). He was on the 
short list, unsuccessfully, to do work in Israel 
and Fiji. 
Marine Borers have been an area which has 
been a consulting field for me from the 
beginning to recent times. I had already written 
about monitoring the logs stored in the West 
Basin of LA Harbor which led to my finding 
and culturing Neanthes. I advised Southern 
California Edison Company about Teredo 
infested pilings. They wanted to use them in 
the construction of the Redondo Beach 
electrical generating station. We thought (Denis 
Fox and I) it was not wise. There was an 
explosion of the intact pipe (4 ft in diameter) 
for Standard Oil in El Segundo. They called me 
in to examine the pipe (I got the job through a 
father in my son’s Indian Guide Troup!). I 
crawled in the pipe a ways and found the inside 
of the pipe to be riddled by housands of 
pholads of the same age. There apparently had 
been a big reproductive bloom and the arvae 
settled on the inside of the pipe and eventually 
burrowed through the wall causing the 
explosion. I suggested that they abandon the 
use of the pipe. Unfortunately, as is often the 
case, I never learned what finally was decided. 
Rick Ware called me a couple of years ago. 
Huntington Harbor had a wood boring 
problem. It was potentially threatening their 
walkways. 
I do not remember how many LA-LB Harbor 
consulting jobs I have had. There were those 
through Dorothy Soule and Harbor Projects 
which I discussed earlier. I had several through 
Atlantis Scientific, ecology of the Navy Base 
through Tom McDonnell and Brown & 
Caldwell, ecology of the harbors based on 50 
years of study and observations. This came 
through Karen Green and MEC Analytical. 
Over the years, my former students have been 
good to me via consulting jobs. Included in the 
list is Jack Anderson, Tom Gerlinger, Rick 
Ware, Tom McDonnell, Karen Green. Needless 
to say, I wish to thank them. 
[Next: Chapter 19 - The Graduate Students] 
CANDIDATE BIOGRAPHIES 
PRESIDENT 
Ron Velarde 
Ron is the current President of SCAMIT and a 
past Vice-President; he has been a Marine 
Biologist with the City of San Diego since 
1983 and currently is the supervisor of Benthic 
Taxonomy for the Ocean Monitoring Program. 
His taxonomic interests include most groups, 
especially polychaetes and nudibranch 
mollusks. He earned his B.S. degree in Marine 
Biology from California State University, Long 
Beach, in 1976, and did post-graduate research 
on the systematics and ecology of autolytid 
polychaetes. 
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