Catherine Musemeche - Lethal Tides: Mary Sears and the Marine Scientists Who Helped Win World War II

Map by Nick Springer, copyright 2022 Springer Cartographics LLC

W hen the United Nations deemed 1998 the International Year of the Ocean, the United States Navy sponsored a contest that would, for the first time, allow schoolchildren to propose names for a new oceanographic survey ship. They hoped it would motivate students to learn about the ocean while gaining experience with the newly popular Internet.

Second graders in Fort Worth, Texas, came up with the USNS Blue Marble, because the sea is blue. A team of fifth graders in Indiana proposed the USNS Rachel Carson, in honor of the marine biologist and author of Silent Spring, who raised awareness of the dangers of chemical pesticides. A tenth-grade honors class in central Florida chose the USNS Odysseus as a fitting moniker in light of the Greek kings mythical seafaring adventures.

Students at Zion-Benton Township High School in Zion, Illinois, submitted the USNS Mary Sears. They had scoured online articles and discovered this unsung hero whose wartime reports were critical to the survivability of U.S. submarines in World War II. Their entry made the list of ten finalists.

After evaluating sixteen hundred entries, the navy picked the USNS Bruce Heezen, in honor of an oceanographer who mapped ocean floors, but the Zion students selection of the USNS Mary Sears stuck with Richard Danzig, the incoming secretary of the navy. A year later, he announced that the USNS Mary Sears would become the navys next oceanographic survey ship, the first survey ship named after a woman.

Up until that point, Searss numerous contributions had been almost completely lost in the annals of war, a history that often overlooked the roles of women who served behind the scenes. One person who was not surprised to hear of the honor was Searss half-sister, Leila Sears, who served as a WAVE in the navys code decryption department in World War II. Leila remembered a day during the war when she delivered a stack of decrypted dispatches to Admiral Chester W. Nimitzs naval office in the Pentagon for his review and signature. While signing the reports Nimitz noticed the name tag SEARS on the young couriers uniform and asked if she was related to Lt. Mary Sears. Upon informing Nimitz that Mary was indeed her older sister, the naval commander rose from his chair, took both of her hands in his, and said, Someday the country will learn how much it owes to your sister, Mary.

That day came on October 19, 2000, three years after Mary Searss death, when Leila gathered with family members and friends of the naval oceanographer at Halter Marine shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, to christen the USNS Mary Sears.

Mary Sears overcame gender, age, and rejection by the navy only to find herself in the middle of a global two-ocean war making lifesaving predictions on the eve of major battles. But this story is bigger than one womans meritorious service to her country. It is also the story of how the nascent field of oceanography came of age and refocused its efforts to provide tools and intelligence to help win the war and how fledgling amphibious forces grew into a premier assault team. In the end, Sears, oceanography, and the navy all became intimately intertwined as they joined their efforts to forge a path to victory in the Pacific Campaign.

Peru, 1941

O n December 7, 1941, marine biologist Mary Sears, working in the warm waters off the western coast of South America in Pisco Bay, unfurled her plankton net from the back of the trawler Don Jaime and tossed it back into the swirl of an open sea. She watched as the net billowed off the stern of the boat and filled with salt water, collecting only the tiniest of organisms she had come to Peru to study. She reeled her catch back in again and carefully emptied the samples into glass jars, then marked the date and location on each one, completely immersed in the research that had brought her to this foreign land on the eve of war.

Sears had chosen a dangerous time to travel overseas. In August of 1941, when she had embarked on her voyage from Boston, Massachusetts, the United States was not yet at war, but it was close. Germany had already overpowered France and Yugoslavia; Greece had just surrendered, and the British were barely hanging on after the Battle of Britain. German U-boats had already attacked and sunk hundreds of merchant ships in the Atlantic. But even with the lurking Nazi threat, Sears wasnt about to pass up the excursion.

La Compaa Administradora del Guano of the Peruvian government had requested her expertise to solve a problem that threatened the countrys guano industry, the bedrock of their economy. The supply of Peruvian guano, a lucrative resource for the country and considered some of the finest fertilizer worldwide, was under threat. Sears was one of the few people who could help save it.

When Peruvians first mined the natural fertilizer from coastal islands in the 1800s, the rich deposits were two hundred feet deep and considered so valuable that two wars broke out over who owned the islands, with Spain, Bolivia, and Chile all trying to claim them. Because of the intense extraction efforts, the guano deposits had since melted away and Peru now depended on the annual renewal of the crop.

During a normal season, the guano birds of Peruguanay cormorants, Peruvian pelicans, and boobiesgathered by the millions to feast on anchovies produced in abundance in a narrow band of cold water along the coast. Their primary nesting grounds were the Chincha Islands, three small granite-covered islands, thirteen miles off the coast of Pisco that reeked of bitter ammonia. Native Quechuan-speaking laborers swept up the guano using shovels and large brushes and packed it into sacks for processing.

In 1939, American ornithologist William Vogt had traveled to Peru at the request of the guano company to study ways to increase production. While Vogt was working in Peru the El Nio of 1941 had hit, causing a warming of waters where the birds fed. Hundreds of thousands of birds died, crippling the guano industry. Suddenly, Vogts mission changed. His new focus became preventing the death and possible extinction of the guano birds.