Hitting the Books: Cutting-Edge Oceanographers Helped Win WWII Using Marine Science

Lethal Tides tells the story of pioneering ocean researcher Mary Sears and her leading role in creating one of the most important intelligence-gathering operations of World War II world. Languishing in academic obscurity and outright ignored by her male colleagues, Sears is selected for command by climate change godfather Roger Revelle and put in charge of the oceanographic unit of the navy's hydrographic office. She and her team of researchers are tasked with helping make the Navy's atoll campaign in the Pacific a reality by analyzing ocean currents, mapping bioluminescence fields and deep-sea crevasses that could reveal or conceal enemy U.S. submarines, and map the shore and surf conditions of the Pacific Islands and Japan itself.

Harper Collins

From Lethal Tides by Catherine Musemeche. Copyright © 2022 by Catherine Musemeche. Reprinted with permission from William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

— Washington, D.C., 1943 —

Four months into his work in the oceanographic unit, Sears had learned a lot about what the military expected of oceanographers. She had learned this from meeting Roger Revelle and his cronies at the Joint Chiefs Subcommittee on Oceanography, where she had listened to concerns about what the Navy was missing and took detailed notes. She had learned this while responding to requests from all branches of the military for tidal data, wave forecasts and currents to support tactical operations overseas. She had learned this by collecting every known reference on drifting and writing an urgently needed manual to help locate men lost at sea. The more she learned, the more she understood exactly how much the lack of oceanographic was serious and how it could undermine military operations. And now she was going to have to do something.

Sears was no longer in Woods Hole, where she had been ostracized by her male colleagues who sailed Atlantis and collected her specimens while she remained ashore. For the first time in her life, she was in charge. It was now his responsibility to set up and direct the operations of an oceanographic intelligence unit researching vital matters that impacted the war. She had never been asked to set agendas, call meetings, or give people orders, let alone make sure they carried them out, but she was going to have to do those things for the military to get the information they needed to win the war. She was going to have to take the lead.

To take on the role of leader, Sears would need to push aside his innate reserved tendencies and all the thoughts going through his head that screamed that you don't belong here. Taking on a team of oceanographers wasn't natural for a lab scientist who worked alone all day staring at a microscope, especially if that scientist was a woman, but Sears had learned by watching Revelle. He had started out as an academic in a tweed jacket with elbow patches, but when the Navy made him a lieutenant, he took on the "man in charge" persona.

When Revelle walked into the Munitions Building conference room - tall, broad-shouldered and in uniform - he was in complete control. He spoke with a resounding and decisive voice. He had an answer to every question. He solved problems. Now, thanks to the overconfident Revelle, Sears also wore the uniform. She had put herself in her place at the Hydrographic Office. She wasn't going to let anyone think she couldn't fill them.

During the first year of the war, there had been a mad rush to Washington to gather information on countries where troops could fight, especially distant places like New Guinea, Indochina , Formosa and all the little islands that dot the sixty-four million square miles of the Pacific Ocean. World War II spread across the world to places most Americans had never heard of and where the military had never been. It was unlike any other war the Americans had fought.

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