Ed Thomasson, holding a copy of his book
Study of the Sea, a collection of some of the key articles appearing in
ICES publications over several decades. In the background: the handsome poster
which he produced.
Shortly after Dr Basil Parrish became General Secretary of ICES in the spring of 1983 he offered me the editorship of a two-year-old newsletter called "ICES/CIEM Information". The newsletter desperately needed perking up, and Basil, for some reason for which I shall be eternally grateful, asked me to put things right. Several years earlier I wrote a memo to Basil's predecessor, Hans Tambs-Lyche, suggesting that ICES publish a newsletter "to put a human face on the multifaceted and technical work of ICES." As the ICES Librarian I was extremely conscious of the need for a house organ with a strong intellectual image to compete with incoming publications from other marine science institutions, and at the same time draw the widely dispersed ICES scientists closer together.
The job of editing the ICES newsletter was a chance to put my ideas into practice. Beginning with issue no. 4, I enlarged the newsletter's format, redesigned its masthead, took a photo of ICES Headquarters and placed it on the front page, asked the ICES Statistician at the time, Kjartan Hoydal, to write what was to become the first of many essays covering annual meetings, requested photographs from two well-known scientists, wrote several articles regarding meetings and personalities, and drew a cartoon to fill a blank space on the back page. From then on the six-page biannual newsletter (now 16 pages) was off and running, picking up more and more readers as the years went by. At last count circulation was about 2500.
Interviews with prominent senior scientists (known in the trade as "big fish"), book reviews, autobiographical essays, "In Focus" marine institute profiles (Basil's idea and a good one), annual features, such as: Our Man in Rome by Dr Richard Grainger and North American Viewpoint by Dr Emory D. Anderson, special correspondents' reports, as Teresa Nunes' report on Spain, conveners' reports on symposia, mini-symposia, theme sessions, and dialogue meetings soon became routine newsletter features.
Photographs spread over three columns, boldface type for names mentioned in articles, recycled Council Meeting papers, obituaries, and maps and graphs whenever appropriate would come later. All of these tools, like nets thrown into deep water, were meant to pull in as many talented and important contributors as possible.
One tradition I started from the very beginning was to eliminate the ICES habit, normally practised by scientific journals, of writing people's initials instead of first names, and another habit eliminated was that of ignoring titles, such as Dr, Professor, or Director. I wanted full-fledged people highlighted in the newsletter, not barely recognizable stickfigures. After all, one of the main purposes of the newsletter was to revive the personal touch and sense of being a part of a community, a word unused in ICES documents until this writer used it in brochures and newsletters, which, I believed, was lost as the organization grew so much in the last 20 years.
The newsletter was for me always greater than the sum of its parts. Its strength lay in its multidsciplinary character and its appeal to the intellectually curious reader who wanted to escape, no matter how briefly, the world of dry-as-dust statistics, charts, graphs, formulas, and specialized jargon.
Speaking of appeal, one thing which was always a bee in my bonnet was the formal name of ICES. The eight word "name" invented at the turn of the century is simply too long to say and takes up too much space in a sentence. In short it's not "user friendly." It says little and means less. This idea might be a non-starter, but if we want to keep the ambiguity of the present name and still appear modern, why not simply call ourselves, starting in 2002, the International Sea Council (ISC)? In the global multimedia age short is sweet especially in the newsletter business.
A lively and attractive publication (I long for the day when colour photos will be introduced) is an absolute necessity to promote ICES to a greater public. It is the duty of the Editor to seek out those writers within the disciplines of the organization, "public intellectuals" if I may call them such, who have the ability to discuss current and occasionally historical issues pertaining to the ICES community.
However, and I can't emphasize this enough, one of the great difficulties facing the Editor was getting "readable" contributions from a wide variety of countries. Too often I relied on contributions from the British, American, Canadian, Scandinavian, German, Dutch, Spanish, and Irish scientists. Needless to say, there is room for much improvement in this area.
But what makes a newsletter interesting is not just the writers, important as they are, but also the issues or topics of concern. During my editorship the "greening of ICES" occurred. The movement led by ICES President David de G. Griffith, Consultative Committee Chairman Professor Chris Hopkins, the Bureau, and General Secretary Dr Emory D. Anderson (he wrote the paper which was summarized on the front page of the March 1992 newsletter) led the way to strengthening the environmental component of the Council's work in line with its long-established programs in fisheries science.
This step brought in marine ecologists out of the cold and hurled to the forefront of the ICES agenda a list of timely and, above all, interesting topics, e.g. cod and climate change research, the effects of fishing on marine ecosystems, the nature of harmful algal blooms, biodiversity monitoring, the impact of mariculture operations on coastal zone management, ecological risk of alien species in ballast water, etc.
This was followed by action on several other interesting fronts: debates on the restructuring of ICES, concern for young scientists, increased interest in seabird/fisheries interactions, economics in fishery management discussions, the establishment of the GLOBEC Office, assistance to American undergraduate science students, etc.
The newsletter in a sense rode the crest of a wave of introspection which had repercussions in all directions. So my thanks go not just to those men and women who wrote articles for the newsletter, but also to those who had a hand in making ICES a more dynamic and more newsworthy institution.
I must now thank Judith Rosenmeier, who over the years saved me from making more mistakes than I would ever care to remember. Thanks also go to Ingolf Bache for his effort to make every printed page look good.
Finally, I want to thank my former boss, Dr Emory D. Anderson, and my present boss, Professor Chris Hopkins, for letting me run my own show for the most part with little interference. It was, to use the title of an old 1930s American play, an experience that happens but "Once in a Lifetime."