Wheeler North, 80; Helped Save Kelp Beds

Wheeler North, a marine biologist who developed techniques to reforest the depleted kelp beds off the coast of Southern California, and pioneered the use of scuba diving as a basic research tool for marine scientists, has died. He was 80.

He had been in frail health for some years and died Friday at Hoag Memorial Hospital in Newport Beach.

Raised in La Jolla, one of two children of a mining engineer, North became fascinated by marine life as a boy and began to probe the tide pools near his family’s home when he was 7. His first underwater adventure was a 10-minute excursion in 1949, as an undergraduate at California Technical Institute in Pasadena. He remembered it vividly for the rest of his life.

Wearing long woolen underwear for lack of a wet suit, and an “aqua lung,” a breathing device that preceded modern scuba gear, North waded into the water off La Jolla Cove.

“I only went down 10 feet,” he recalled in 1995. “But even at that shallow depth, I was immersed in a remarkable community. Fish of all kinds slowly passed by, instead of fleeing like animals do on land. Eelgrass and kelp swayed with the current. I was mesmerized.”

A serious fall down a seaside cliff put an end to diving for some time, and caused him to limp for the rest of his life. North broke his back in the fall, and the family dog, Benny, saved him by going for help as the tide rolled in around him.

At the time, North was excavating caves above the shoreline. A notorious packrat, he stored his collection of specimens, bottles, motors and other “musts” in the natural recesses. As he filled one cave, he went in search of another. He was in the process of digging out a new cave when the cliff gave way.

After graduating from Caltech with degrees in electrical engineering and biology, North entered the doctoral program at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego. He studied marine ecology with special attention to the kelp beds off the Southern California coast and the effects of the sea urchin population upon them.

In later years he also researched kelp as an alternative fuel, and tracked the effects of several major oil spills on marine life. The week of his death he was writing his findings on a spill of diesel fuel off the coast of Santa Barbara in 1957 that he had been monitoring from the time of the accident.

After completing his doctorate at Cambridge University in 1955, North returned to Scripps with a grant to further his studies. “I was the only diving PhD around,” he said to explain how he got funding for his somewhat obscure research. He also began to offer scuba diving lessons to research scientists, partly so that his own assistants could accompany him under water.

An El Nino condition in 1957 led to a breakthrough discovery for North and his colleagues. The kelp forests at Point Loma and Palos Verdes were in decline. Hordes of sea urchins were feasting on them. The question was: Did the warm waters brought on by El Nino encourage the urchins?

North camped on the beach for a week, diving and observing each day. He concluded that sewage being pumped into the ocean, not an El Nino condition, supported the increase in sea urchins.

A colleague suggested using quicklime to control the problem. Sprinkled on the water it sank to the bottom, scorched and killed the urchins. Immediately, the kelp began to flourish. But the lime apparently affected other marine life adversely as well.

North suggested a different technique and received a grant to test it. He and his assistants hammered, or “mashed” the urchins to death. The technique is still used.

His determination to preserve the kelp forests came out of his research. North proved that they are part of a complex marine ecosystem providing food and shelter for hundreds of underwater species. His techniques for reforestation and laboratory cultivation of kelp are now considered the standard. They are among techniques used by the Marine Forests Society, a group North helped to found in 1986, to replace damaged marine habitats. “The kelp beds off Southern California are in the best condition since 1922, the beginning of their monitoring,” North’s longtime colleague Charles Mitchell told The Times on Friday. “Water temperatures and nutrients have also contributed to their health.”

Mitchell first worked with North as an assistant in 1956 and referred to him as his adopted father. North helped him to found MBC Applied Environmental Sciences, a marine biology consulting firm in Costa Mesa.

By 1963, North’s reputation as a scientist reached international scope. Caltech invited him to join its environmental engineering group and he accepted, although he spent more time at the Institute’s Kerckhoff Marine Laboratory in Corona del Mar than on the Pasadena campus. During those years, he reforested kelp beds off the coast of San Diego and Palos Verdes by planting laboratory cultivated kelp, or transplanting it from elsewhere. He also developed a deep-sea kelp farm where he could explore the use of kelp as an alternative energy source.

North wrote about his work for the August 1972 issue of National Geographic:

“Creatures bizarre and beautiful swarm about me. Overhead, the tangled foliage almost obscures the daylight.

“But I need no tree climbing irons; only fins. The air I breathe is carried on my back. I am a scuba forester and the ‘trees’ I tend are giant, vine-like streamers from the ocean floor off Southern California.”

Patrick Leahy, director of the Kerckhoff Laboratory, met North 28 years ago when he got his first job there. He knew North by reputation, but was surprised by what he saw. North was inclined to wear shoes with torn soles that flapped on the sidewalk and clothes that appeared to be castoffs from a recycle bin. “If you saw Wheeler standing in line, you’d think he was just some schmo,” Leahy told the Orange County Register in 1995. “He doesn’t pay much attention to his personal appearance.”

What impressed Leahy was North’s integrity as a scientist. “He was dedicated to his work,” Leahy told The Times on Friday. In recent years, when North struggled with lymphoma as well as persistent back problems, Leahy said, “he was still determined to get around. He wore himself out.”

North is survived by his second wife, Barbara, a son and a daughter. He divorced his first wife, Nance, in 1960.