High-Tech Research Meets High-Class Travel
Two decks below the Princess Marla’s heliport and Jacuzzi, one deck below the baby grand player piano and the satellite TV, sits a box of scientific instruments that have nothing to do with the creature comforts of the yacht’s media-mogul owner.
The $50,000 module of sensors and computers is designed to take the pulse of the ocean and beam back its findings--sort of a marine health report card.
So when the 162-foot super yacht transports its owner, Lowell “Bud” Paxson, to Tahiti, Fiji and beyond this summer, it will also deliver information on ocean temperatures and on toxic metals and other pollutants to scientists and the shore-bound curious.
The purpose is to help scientists predict the weather, monitor global climate change and track the migration of man-made pollutants.
Initially dubious, scientists are now less inclined to dismiss the project as a fancy tax dodge.
“When I first heard about this, I was pretty skeptical,” said Rod Zika, chairman of the marine and atmospheric chemistry department at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School, who signed on as chief scientist for the new data collection effort. “But it’s been going for three years and been growing and growing.”
It’s all part of a Beverly Hills developer’s brainchild to sign up the super-rich and their super-yachts in a global network of ocean data collectors.
Think Thurston Howell of “Gilligan’s Island” taking a suitcase of sensors on his fateful three-hour tour.
“It has become the most incredible club that has ever been put together,” said Albert Gersten of Beverly Hills, proud founder of the International SeaKeepers Society. “We have 51 members; 28 or 29 are billionaires who don’t need us. They’ve been awfully good eggs about putting these on their yachts.”
Research platforms are scarce in the ocean, scientists say, though there is a decades-long tradition of stowing instruments aboard Navy vessels, fishing trawlers, cargo haulers and other “ships of opportunity,” as they call them.
“The ocean is so vast, any way we can get data, we’ll take it,” said Stephen B. Weisberg, director of the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project. “The more ships of opportunity, the better.”
So Paxson, founder of the Home Shopping Network and Pax TV, recently had two small holes punched in the bottom of the Princess Marla’s sleek hull.
One hole takes in water. A pump circulates it past a series of sensors that measure everything from phytoplankton to pH levels, from temperature to turbidity, before the water is jettisoned through the second hole. Along with weather data collected topside, average readings are transmitted automatically via satellite to the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science at the University of Miami, which helped develop the technology.
The school, in turn, shares the information with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for broader dissemination.
“We are ecology-minded in being yachtsmen,” Paxson said recently, sitting in the plush salon of his craft docked at Marina del Rey. “We don’t want the sea to become something that’s no fun to go on. I get a lot of satisfaction that there are scientists out there being able to use information collected by my boat.”
Paxson paid $50,000 for the package of sensors. But it’s far from his favorite contraption aboard the Princess Marla, with its five staterooms and permanent crew of 12.
Giving an impromptu tour, Paxson took a guest past the circular bar, down the spiral staircase that wraps around the three-deck-high steel-and-brass sculpture of cranes, herons and frigate birds in mid-flight.
He stepped past the mahogany piano that matches the paneling of the main salon and cracked open a hatch to a hidden staircase. Down it he went to show off his favorite feature: an enormous mobile fishing deck that lowers off the stern on powerful hydraulics. Dead center in the deck is a metal mount for Paxson’s fighting chair.
“This,” he said, waving toward the end of 162 feet of yacht, “becomes the world’s largest sports trawler.”
And all those SeaKeepers sensors may come in handy figuring out when the big ones are biting. “There’s a great correlation between salinity, particulate matter and temperature and how good the fishing is,” Paxson said.
Other SeaKeepers members include Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who has equipped his 201-foot Meduse with the sensors. Cellular phone pioneer Craig McCaw has done the same with his 328-foot Tatoosh.
On the other hand, Jim Clark, the software junkie who helped launch Silicon Graphics and Netscape, decided not to put the equipment on what is arguably the world’s smartest sloop, his $30-million, 155-foot Hyperion. It’s already crammed with electronics. So he’s building another, bigger boat. The 266-foot schooner will have the SeaKeepers unit on board.
Most of the 33 yachts carrying the equipment rendezvous every summer for ShowBoats magazine’s Bal de la Mer charity in Monte Carlo, Monaco. More than a dozen other yachts will do so as soon as they hit dry dock for repairs.
Paxson, who has been skippering oceangoing yachts for decades, sees unlimited potential for the experiment, given the surging number of super-yachts. “There are now 3,000 yachts over 100 feet long,” he said. “Ten years ago, there wasn’t a hundred of us.”
These folks, of course, didn’t get to be titans of industry by throwing their money overboard. With the SeaKeepers sensors, they are making a $50,000 donation to a charitable foundation, and, in return, qualifying for a tax deduction as well as a nifty package of scientific gizmos.
SeaKeepers President Tom Houston said that fewer than a third of the members have sought tax deductions, because the donations come from their personal foundations or because their legal residences are overseas.
Royal Caribbean and Carnival cruise lines also are beginning to equip their ships with the sensors. Global Crossing, the telecommunications company, plans to test the equipment on its fleet of 20 ships that lay fiber-optic cable on the ocean floor.
SeaKeepers recently approached California officials about putting 25 of the modules at the end of piers and on buoys along the state’s coastline.
The hope is that, besides supplying data to scientists, the modules someday will give the beachgoing public an instant read on ocean pollutants from storm-drain runoff or sewage spills.
No one has yet developed a sensor to detect instantly when E. coli or other bacteria are present--a signal that coastal waters are unsafe for swimming. Such detection still requires 18 hours to grow bacteria in a lab. Researchers are hoping for a breakthrough in the next few years.
“If we can’t get public funding, we are going to raise the money,” said Houston, a former Los Angeles deputy mayor. “We are going to have an adopt-a-pier program.”
Gersten, the Beverly Hills developer who owns a 100-foot yacht anchored off the Caribbean island of St. Martin, predicted that “by the time we’re finished, we are going to be the largest collectors of data in the world.”
