SAN DIEGO, California (25 Aug 2005) -- Empowered by the promise of discovery, Andreas "Andy" Rechnitzer envisioned the sea as an infinite laboratory waiting to be explored and understood. "It's like a magic mirror," he once said. Dr. Rechnitzer spoke from equal parts experience and inspiration. He had pioneered the use of scuba diving in ocean science and masterminded a record 35,800-foot dive in 1960 to the bottom of the Marianas Trench. The dive, in the bathyscaph Trieste off the coast of Guam, surpassed the 18,500-foot record that Dr. Rechnitzer had set in 1959 and opened an era for the development of deep submergence vehicles in ocean exploration. It also enabled the Navy to gather valuable scientific data on the transmission of man-made sounds. Dr. Rechnitzer, whose contributions to the fields of undersea vehicles, diving and ocean science spanned more than 50 years, died Monday at Grossmont Hospital. He was 80. The cause of death was pulmonary fibrosis, said his son, David. "Andy never lost that youthful wonder of what was new under the ocean, and he inspired many of us with it," said Kevin Hardy, an engineer and special projects director at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. "He was a dreamer who had the confidence to pull it off." In a 1999 interview with The San Diego Union-Tribune, Dr. Rechnitzer expressed those qualities. "People used to say to me all the time, 'Where are you going next?'," he said. "I'd say, 'What difference does it make? Nobody's ever been there before!' " For their roles in the Trieste project, Dr. Rechnitzer and his colleagues received Presidential Distinguished Citizen Service awards from President Eisenhower. When he directed the Trieste project, Dr. Rechnitzer was coordinator of the Naval Electronics Laboratory's Deep Submergence Research Program. He had joined NEL, which became the Naval Ocean Systems Center, after earning his doctorate at Scripps in the study of fishes. Dr. Rechnitzer had considered staying at Scripps but decided to heed the advice of Roger Revelle, Scripps' director at the time. Revelle told him to head out into the world. "It was the best advice he could have given me," Dr. Rechnitzer later recalled. Before leaving Scripps, Dr. Rechnitzer teamed with Connie Limbaugh and Jim Stewart in developing the first scuba-diver training program for ocean scientists. The training program is the basis of all major sport-diving certification programs in the world today, Hardy said. Dr. Rechnitzer and Limbaugh wrote "Diving Training and Field Procedures Syllabus," which provided safety rules and the first civilian scuba-diving curriculum, said Edward C. Cargile, an author and ocean-diving historian. In 1990, Dr. Rechnitzer helped Cargile produce "The Deepest Dive" for the History Channel, about the Trieste. Dr. Rechnitzer's role in the Trieste project began with his urging the Navy to buy the bathyscaph, a 150-ton sub-like vessel, from Swiss physicist Auguste Piccard. Assembling a team of 16 specialists, Dr. Rechnitzer directed a series of dives, mostly off San Diego. He reached a record of 18,500 feet off Guam in the company of Larry Shoemaker, Cargile said. Jacques Piccard, the son of the bathyscaph's inventor, and Don Walsh, a naval officer, were aboard the Trieste during the historic dive to the bottom of Marianas Trench. "I was supposed to make the dive, but the guy we hired as a consultant suddenly demanded to go down," Dr. Rechnitzer later said. To calculate the depth of the trench, Dr. Rechnitzer had to throw dynamite into the water and time the sound, Cargile said. The bathyscaph took five hours to reach the nearly 7-mile depth of the trench, and the explorers spent 20 minutes at the bottom. | | Dr. Andreas 'Andy' Rechnitzer in the 1960s Dr. Rechnitzer went on to develop underwater equipment systems and projects for Rockwell International and advise two California governors in ocean and coastline ecology. He helped solve the problem of getting fingerling salmon and trout over high dams, discovered fish species and developed a scientific method for recording fish. In 1974, he validated the discovery and location of the Civil War ironclad, the Monitor, that had sunk in 1862 off Hampton Roads, Va., in a battle with the Merrimac. To encourage youths to embrace ocean science, Dr. Rechnitzer became the founding president of the Orange County Marine Institute at Dana Point in July 1977. "Andy was an early advocate of K-12 outreach, authoring segments of books on hands-on marine science for young students," Hardy said. "He was convinced that if you didn't involve young people by the fifth grade, you would miss them altogether." In 1998, Dr. Rechnitzer retired from SAIC, where he had served for 13 years as a senior scientist in the defense industry. He continued to be active as a consultant until his death. "His philosophy was that if it's not written down, it will never be remembered," David Rechnitzer said. "He encouraged people to write books and write their ideas down." Dr. Rechnitzer wrote volumes of his own, including more than 50 research and technical papers in science, engineering, education and diving. Andreas B. Rechnitzer, an El Cajon resident for two decades, was born Nov. 30, 1924, in Escondido. He was the son of Danish immigrants and grew up on an eight-acre farm. He didn't wear shoes until he was 13. He learned to swim in a 3,000-gallon tank that had once served a gold mine. "I got a mask and fins at 10 and speared my first fish off La Jolla," he said. In 1945, he graduated from the U.S. Navy Midshipmen School at Fort Schuyler, N.Y., and was commissioned as an ensign in the Naval Reserve. He later attained the rank of captain. He earned a bachelor's degree at Michigan State University in 1947 and a master's in 1951 at the University of California Los Angeles. Dr. Rechnitzer began studying at Scripps in 1950. Survivors include his wife, Alice; daughter, Andrea Fry of Spring Valley; sons, David Rechnitzer of Fullerton, Martin Rechnitzer of Burleson, Texas, and Michael Rechnitzer of El Cajon; nine grandchildren; and a great-grandchild. A memorial service is pending at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. |
