EXPLORING the SCIENCE and BEAUTY of NATURE: a photographic autobiography (Exploring the Science and Beauty of Nature)

My Life in Photographs This book features my career as a marine biologist, entrepreneur and photographer and begins with stories about my days spent underwater as a ‘fish counter.’ As a boy born in a one room farm house lacking plumbing and electricity on a farm in Western Kansas, I was ecstatic to be one of the few out of many applicants accepted for doctoral degree studies at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and to have the great fortune to acquire the financial and academic support that allowed me to conduct underwater studies of the fish populations inhabiting the tropical lagoon of a remote coral reef atoll in Micronesia and the Hawaiian Islands. The highlights of several of my journeys are captured in a collection of photos that feature the plant and animal life of the Hawaiian and Marshall Islands as well as rescuing a giant whale shark beached in the Phoenix Islands and floating on a catamaran on a calm night with John Denver playing his guitar and singing the songs that he loved the most. Tributes are are also made to the Scripps’ faculty who went out of their way to guide me through many challenges that I faced as a grad student and person. I especially feel gratitude to Richard Rosenblatt, John Isaacs, Carl Hubbs, and Paul Dayton who were the cornerstones to my meeting the high standards of a graduate of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. The book also reveals highlights of the underwater research that I conducted over five decades which amounted to thousands of hours expended beneath the sea surface–and a host of close calls including surveys of the marine life inhabiting two craters that were formed by nuclear bombs that were detonated in the late 1950’s. As the focus of my doctoral research, and with the help of my friends, I constructed artificial reefs in Enewetak Atoll lagoon and then monitored the recruitment rate of larval fishes to the newly available habitat. Another one of the many adventures (that I have referred to as Journeys in the book) is the world altitude record SCUBA dive I made at a lake on the summit of Mauna Kea volcano on the Island of Hawaii. But my true avocation was fish surveys, many of which I received contracts for my services from the State of Hawaii and the National Marine Fisheries Service and often conducted on the Island of Hawaii. Also known the Big Island, in the mid 70’s, the reefs were rich in diversity and only beginning to experience the impact of commercial fishing-especially what was then the new business of live aquarium fish collecting. I hope you share my passion for flowers, streams and forests. I have been lucky to have been in the right place when the aspens changed color and bioluminescent fish lit up the deep sea while brilliant engineers built the first Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) plants that have opened a new path to clean energy and healing the climate crisis. I also hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I have had in sorting through several thousand images that reminded me of days gone by- but not yet forgotten. The second book in the Exploring Nature series is in development. You are welcome to send me an E-Mail at nolan@planetropolis.com and I will put you on the notification mailing list. You are welcome to search for “Ron S. Nolan” on Amazon to see my growing list of science fiction novels. Since I spend most of my days writing, and little time on marketing, reviews are most welcome!