Memories

MARINE MAMMAL SCIENCE, 15(2):616-618 (April 1999) 0 1999 by the Society for Marine Mammalogy

DAVID EDWARD GASKIN

1939-1 998 David Gaskin died at home in Guelph, Ontario, Canada on 13 September 1998

after a brief but courageous battle with liver cancer. To marine mammalogists he was best known for his work on harbour porpoises and as the author of “The Ecology of Whales and Dolphins” but he also led an active research program on the systematics and ecology of butterflies and moths.

David Edward Gaskin was born into a military family in Croyden, England on 21 June 1939, at the start of the Second World War. He attended a Surrey Grammar School and won a State Scholarship to enter the University of Bristol in 1958, where he studied zoology. He began to collect butterflies and moths as a small boy in Surrey, an interest that would ultimately lead him to a career as a biologist.

After graduating from Bristol in 1961, David took a position as biologist on the Southern Venturer, a U.K. whaling factory ship. David often noted that this was a turning point in his life. His work on the Southern Venturer focused mainly on pelagic Antarctic whaling, but he also saw duty at the South Georgia land station. In the austral whaling season of 1961-1962, David worked in the Falkland Island Depen- dencies, Bouvet Island and the Weddell Sea. David’s experience on the decks of whaling vessels helped to shape his critical view of the exploitation of natural resources.

At the end of 1962, David and his wife Maureen moved to New Zealand and he took a position as Scientific Officer for Whale Research with the Fisheries Research

616

MEMORIES 617

Division of the Marine Department. David’s research in New Zealand was primarily on sperm whales and squid, but he also found time to continue his work on Lepidop- tera. In 1964, David published his first eight scientific papers, which were character- istically diverse-six on Lepidoptera, one on southern right whales, and one on sperm whales.

David continued to work with the New Zealand government until 1965, when he joined the Department of Zoology at Massey University in Palmerston as a Lecturer. While working at Massey, he completed his Ph.D. in Entomology by part-time study. It was in the mountain grasslands of New Zealand that he developed a life-long sci- entific interest in the systematics and ecology of crambid moths of the family Pyralidae. In 1966 he published his first book, “The Butterflies and Common Moths of New Zealand. ”

While at Massey, David returned to work on whaling vessels, this time on second- ment as a biologist for the Food and Agriculture Organization, studying sei whales on a Japanese vessel in the Antarctic. He enjoyed the cultural experience, if not the food, aboard the Chiyoda-Maw No. 5 and acquired one of his favourite foreign languages, Japanese. He continued to publish widely, producing papers on whales, whaling, small cetaceans, squid, moths, and butterflies and in 1968 produced his first monograph on the New Zealand Cetacea. This was followed in 1972 by his book “Whales, Dolphins and Seals, with Special Reference to the New Zealand Region.”

At the end of 1968, David accepted an offer to join the Department of Zoology, University of Guelph as an Assistant Professor. David moved his young family to Canada in 1969 and worked at the Department of Zoology for the remainder of his career. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1972 and to Full Professor in 1982.

In June 1969 David initiated a field research project on harbour porpoises in the Bay of Fundy. David returned to the Bay of Fundy each summer and developed a research program that expanded to include other species of marine mammals and sea- birds. David first worked from St. Andrew’s, New Brunswick, but soon moved to a small and extremely rustic field station on Deer Island, known affectionately as “The Hut,” a rickety wooden structure built over the water’s edge. Several generations of graduate students survived long, foggy field seasons in The Hut, before David expanded his operation to a second site on Grand Manan Island. The Grand Manan Whale and Seabird Research Station, founded by David and two partners in 1981, continues to operate today. The harbour porpoise research program, started by David in 1969 and now based on Grand Manan, stands as one of the longest running field projects on any species of cetacean.

David’s early work on harbour porpoises focused on anatomy and basic life history, although he and his students also conducted important early work on the heavy metal and organochlorine contaminant loads of these animals. This research involved hunting small numbers of porpoises to obtain fresh tissue samples and David was fond of recounting hunting adventures in the early years on Deer Island. In the mid-1970’s David’s research group expanded its focus to include work on the ecology and behaviour of porpoises and seabirds. Over the next two decades, David and his students worked on porpoises, right whales, fin whales, seabirds, shorebirds, herring, and zooplankton in these waters. During this extremely productive period, David published several scores of papers and his influential book “The Ecology of Whales and Dolphins.” Much of our current knowledge regarding the dynamics of upper trophic level organisms in the Bay of Fundy stems directly from this work.

Teaching responsibilities and field work in the Bay of Fundy were not enough to keep David in Canada, and he found time to travel extensively. He made several collecting expeditions to Central and Latin America and supervised graduate student research in Mexico and Peru. He studied harbour porpoises in Japan in 1985 and was a Visiting Professor at the University of Hokkaido in 1986, where he lectured in Japanese. Around the same time, he worked on the highly endangered baiji at Nanjing Normal University in China. He also developed an active interest in the butterflies

618 M A R I N E MAMMAL SCIENCE, VOL. 15. NO. 2 , 1999

and moths of the Aegean region and made numerous collecting trips to Greece, Al- bania, Bulgaria, and Turkey between 1982 and 1992. He was one of the first western scientists to visit Albania after the fall of the communist regime and lectured at the Enver Hoxha University in Tirane in 1988. His ability to master difficult languages was legendary and, at one time or another, he was able to communicate effectively in French, Spanish, Norwegian, Greek, Albanian, Japanese and Mandarin.

While at Guelph, David supervised the completion of 35 graduate theses. Most of this work focused on marine mammals of the Bay of Fundy and particularly the harbour porpoise, but his students also worked on other species in many parts of the world. Perhaps appropriately, his last two graduate students were working on moths and butterflies at the time of his death, as David had concluded that it was no longer possible to run a large research program on marine mammals given the constraints of federal funding for science in Canada. David allowed his graduate students considerable latitude in their work, which resulted in both success and disaster, but he was generous with support when it was really needed. He regaled his students with stories of exotic travel, political subterfuge and intrigue. In turn, his students viewed their advisor as slightly eccentric, but with a good measure of respect and fondness. He was a stickler for the proper use of English and one of his greatest peeves was the Americanization (or bastardization as he referred to it) of scientific English. It was not unusual for him to return a draft manuscript awash in a sea of red ink, particularly if it included adjectival nouns.

David played an active and important role in the undergraduate teaching program at Guelph. His lecturing style was unusual, colorful and entertaining. He was able to link disparate subjects, such as the history of European military conflict in Indonesia with the zoogeography of odontocetes. He possessed an inexhaustible supply of anec- dotes and stories, which he used liberally in his lectures. His experience as an under- graduate in England and as a lecturer in New Zealand led him to believe in the importance of a rigorous post-secondary training and he viewed the lowering of edu- cational standards with abject horror.

David was active on many committees and international organizations. He was a member of the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission and attended IWC meetings from 1963 to 1991. He was a member of the Cetacean Spe- cialist Group of the IUCN, the Canadian Committee on Whales and Whaling, and a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society. He took his work on the conservation of cetaceans, moths, and butterflies very seriously and tried to ensure that science was used wisely in management. He had no love of bureaucrats and was quick to point out the failings of ineffective policy and management.

David will be remembered by his friends and colleagues for many things: an influ- ential and important body of publications, an iconoclastic and irreverent sense of hu- mour, dark stories about his days in military service, an ability to balance a career studying moths with another studying whales, and as a mentor for a large number of students, now scattered across the world and continuing his scientific legacy. We think David would like us to remember him in the remote mountains of some Balkan country, sipping ouzo and joking with local friends, waiting to check his moth traps. Near the end, when David was asked about his religious beliefs, he laughed and replied “I believe in recycling.” His publications and ex-students will ensure that his scientific contribution will be recycled well into the future.

David is survived by his wife Maureen, sons Ross and Paul, daughters-in law Susan and Holly, much beloved granddaughter Amy, and his brother Michael. In honour of David’s contribution to undergraduate teaching, the Department of Zoology has es- tablished the Gaskin Medal in Marine and Freshwater Biology, to be awarded annually to an outstanding undergraduate student. Contributions to the award may be sent to Dr. Paul Hebert, Chair of the Department of Zoology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario N1G 2W1, Canada. ANDREW J. READ, HEATHER N. KOOPMAN and ANDREW J. WESTGATE, Duke university Marine Laboratory, 135 Duke Marine Lab Road, Beaufort, North Carolina 28516, U.S.A.