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Dr. Lewis Shapiro, Part 2

Dr. Lewis "Lew" Shapiro was interviewed on May 1, 2014 by Karen Brewster at his office at the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Lew was interviewed because of his extensive career researching sea ice mechanics in northern Alaska, and because of his role in the project related to potential oil development of the Alaskan continental shelf whose interviews appear in the North Alaskan Sea Ice Project Jukebox and in the Historical References to Ice Conditions Along the Beaufort Sea Coast of Alaska (Scientific Report, Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 1979). In this second part of a two part interview, Lew talks about his scientific research studying sea ice mechanics, use of Landsat imagery, results of his research, and combining understanding oil industry needs with sea ice research.

Digital Asset Information

Archive #: Oral History 2013-25-25_PT.2

Project: Sea Ice in Northern Alaska
Date of Interview: May 1, 2014
Narrator(s): Dr. Lewis Shapiro
Interviewer(s): Karen Brewster
Transcriber: Joan O'Leary
Location of Interview:
Location of Topic:
Funding Partners:
Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Coastal Marine Institute, North Pacific Research Board
Alternate Transcripts
There is no alternate transcript for this interview.
Slideshow
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Sections

Using Landsat imagery to look at ice movement

Extrusion process and modeling ice movement like a plastic material

Relationship between sea ice and distribution of marine mammals

Working at the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory (NARL) and research projects worked on

Sea ice field work in Barrow, and working with Kenneth Toovak and other Inupiat people in Barrow

Mixing local knowledge with research of scientific principles

Ice and barrier islands

Atmosphere of NARL and interaction amongst people

Contributions to understanding of sea ice mechanics, and teaching about geology and sea ice

Motivation for doing his work, teaching and retirement

Combining understanding of industry needs with scientific research

Changes in the field of sea ice research

Development of the subsea floor, and effect of climate change on the northern sea ice environment

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Transcript

KAREN BREWSTER: The Landsat project that you worked on --

LEW SHAPIRO: Well, what I -- what I did was when we happened to be -- when the first Landsat came back that we started getting -- we got -- it was March of 1973 and the first one -- oh here, it’s in this thing here.

Oops. The paper is in here. You can get one of these books. I don’t know -- you might even.

KAREN BREWSTER: It's probably in the library. LEW SHAPIRO: You can get one for free. Go to the -- KAREN BREWSTER: Climate in the Arctic.

LEW SHAPIRO: Go to the -- to the -- what do you call it -- the map office down there. KAREN BREWSTER: So it's called Climate of the Arctic.

LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah, they got hundreds of them laying around down there. KAREN BREWSTER: Okay. LEW SHAPIRO: Let me see --

Let's see if I can remember it. If I can find it offhand.

Ah, here we go. This is the paper. This was the first one. KAREN BREWSTER: Okay.

LEW SHAPIRO: That’s the name of it.

KAREN BREWSTER: Satellite Observations of Sea Ice Movement in the Bering Strait Region. LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Okay.

LEW SHAPIRO: So what we did was we got -- these pictures came down. These were Landsat.

There were three days of pictures. Here’s the -- this is the map of the pictures that we -- that we worked with. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: And we -- there was -- we made a mosaic or they made a mosaic downstairs here in the photo lab and so these are two consecutive days -- I don’t know if we got the third day in here, but anyway we had mosaics with three days.

And this shows it. So they overlap. So you can look at one picture and then you could compare the next one and you can identify points on the pack ice from this picture that are still here on this one.

KAREN BREWSTER: Right. LEW SHAPIRO: Okay. KAREN BREWSTER: As reference.

LEW SHAPIRO: Okay. So in order to map it, which you can do -- is you can come up with these little vectors see if you compared them from --

Okay so the way I did this thing was we had to pick the individual pictures. I didn’t have the mosaics at the time. I had the individual pictures, and I took a big sheet of Mylar, okay.

And I rolled it out on my kitchen table at home and then I started marking -- I marked the positions -- the corners of all of these pictures. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: On the Mylar. And then I went through and by moving -- take the picture out, put another one, in I could trace where these things went.

KAREN BREWSTER: So where those ice features moved. LEW SHAPIRO: Where -- yeah, and so this -- KAREN BREWSTER: Or changed.

LEW SHAPIRO: So this is what these things show. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: This is -- this is the movement that we got. And then this is a map of the ice broken and what was interesting about it was to me since I was just from my background in mechanics it --

it suggested to me that the ice was behaving as, you know, that it was basically going through what this is called an extrusion process.

This is a process of pushing, let’s say a molten slab of billets called to make a shi -- to make form, okay. And these -- there's ways of calculating what the flow pattern should be and so on.

And what this suggests is that these sort of lead patterns that you see, which is what this picture is -- KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh. LEW SHAPIRO: And this one here, is akin to the idea that when the ice is being pushed out through Bering Strait it's behaving in a way that is similar to this sort of process.

KAREN BREWSTER: This extrusion process?

LEW SHAPIRO: Extrusion process, yeah. And the process can be modeled either with what’s called a perfectly plastic material which is an engineering term or mechanics term that you don’t have to get involved in.

Or it could even be an aggregate. I mean, the same sort of analysis applies to things like soils.

Boundaries like this are what are called sheer boundaries, bottom of the landslide is a sheer boundary. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: The soil above it flows away. If you're moving grain in a silo or in a chute or something in a grain elevator -- KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: The same sort of analysis applies. Or moving in chutes underground in a mine. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh. LEW SHAPIRO: The same sort of analysis.

KAREN BREWSTER: So why this work with the sea ice in Bering Strait, why was that important?

LEW SHAPIRO: Just -- just because it gave you a way of thinking about it, okay. And it turns out when the AJAX people were writing the models, it turns out they like perfectly plastic materials thing.

And then they did an analysis the same thing using plastic materials from here to come up with these kinds of patterns.

They did the engineering analysis, and before that a guy named Doug Sote at CRREL (Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory) had done one only he treated it like an aggregate, like a loose material. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: See, and so when the guys did the plastic stuff they showed well that theory the aggregate thing is a special case of that, you know. So you're getting into all kinds of mathematical stuff, but basically the idea is that the thing behaves like an aggregate or a perfectly plastic material.

You use the same sort of analyses to handle both types of materials in these situations.

So it gives you a way of thinking about ice. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh. LEW SHAPIRO: What -- what kind of -- what kind of a mechanical law you might use to talk about modeling ice. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, okay.

LEW SHAPIRO: But that’s, you know -- And that applies to a special situation because the whole art of picking the laws of mechanics depends on really understanding what the problem is you’re trying to solve. KAREN BREWSTER: Huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: Because, you know, it -- it gets back to this thing about we were talking earlier about the silly putty. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: It's a very different material depending on the conditions that you deal with it.

KAREN BREWSTER: And so this is very specific to the Bering Straits? LEW SHAPIRO: No. KAREN BREWSTER: No?

LEW SHAPIRO: No, well, it works -- it'll work any place. It works for the whole area actually. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: I mean you can think about it that way. You can think -- once you -- if you think in terms of these models you’re going to have in -- any time when the ice is moving something jams at some place, you’re going to have a dead space in here.

And the ice is going to be shearing off past it -- KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh. LEW SHAPIRO: -- going the other direction. It -- it’s a little more complicated than that.

But basically, I mean, the whole art of, as I say, of doing these sorts of analyses for any material. I mean if you’re going to write --

if you’re going to build a building, you're going -- and you're working with steel you know -- you know the range of properties of steel -- KAREN BREWSTER: Right. LEW SHAPIRO: That you're going to deal with in a building, okay. KAREN BREWSTER: Right.

LEW SHAPIRO: Take it up to 800 degree C or 800 Fahrenheit or something, you got a different material. KAREN BREWSTER: Right.

LEW SHAPIRO: See, but that's the idea here. And so you kind of, you know, if you want to do a long-term -- very long-term averaging of this stuff you might talk about it as a viscoelastic material.

Not even plastic, something totally different. KAREN BREWSTER: Huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: You pick the law that works for the material over the range that you're trying to deal with it. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: Okay. There's no universal law that applies to sea ice period. Or even to -- even a small piece of sea ice. KAREN BREWSTER: Right. Interesting.

LEW SHAPIRO: It’s -- it’s -- that’s why -- I mean any material is like that, but we are not used to it because we deal with things that, you know, in a limited range of temperatures. KAREN BREWSTER: Right.

LEW SHAPIRO: You know, and as long as you stay within that range we’re good, see.

KAREN BREWSTER: So what made you think to use Landsat imagery?

LEW SHAPIRO: Because that was all that was there. First ones came down I looked at that and I said my gosh, you know, and I was looking at this thing here and starting to talk about it and Burns walked in.

We were downstairs one day and John Burns and I knew him at the time. I knew who he was but I didn’t know him. KAREN BREWSTER: So marine mammal biologist? LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

LEW SHAPIRO: And he walked in. He was interested in that, too, because he was trying to get these satellites and do these things, you know.

And so we said, well let’s take a look at this. So we sort of started talking about it together and that’s where this paper came from. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: And then eventually I got involved with him and Bud Fay. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: And who unfortunately died a number of years ago. Too early. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: He was John’s advisor and he was a marine mammal biologist, also.

KAREN BREWSTER: And then what were you guys doing together?

LEW SHAPIRO: We did this long OCSEAP report on a relationship between sea ice and marine mammals. Which is somewhere around here. It’s a big OCSEAP report.

It was -- and we finished that about 1980, I think. There were a couple small papers on it, but it was a big report and people still read -- it surprised me to still talk about it. KAREN BREWSTER: Well --

LEW SHAPIRO: It never -- never really -- it should have been a book.

KAREN BREWSTER: Those marine mammals rely on that sea ice. LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: It's a very symbiotic relationship.

LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah. So we did -- and basically what we did was we took all the information that we could get at that time on distribution of marine mammals. What had been done. Most of them -- a lot of it was, you know, Burns and Fay. KAREN BREWSTER: Right.

LEW SHAPIRO: And stuff that had been done in Bering Sea. Nobody was doing much in the Beaufort, except for flying out looking for seals and so on.

And then we did some -- we looked at all the satellite stuff and made some maps of ice -- of ice types and different and, you know, so on at different times of year.

And put the mammals on it and basically wrote something that said this is where the critters are. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: And this is where they are at certain times of the year. It's interesting Bud Fay was doing these -- looking at the satellite pictures and Bud picked out these areas in Bering Sea where ice tends to stay around for a long period of time in the spring.

And Burns knew about it. He was kind of speculated about that because there had to be some place they went to get out -- to haul out.

And he knew where they were, and it turns out they haul out on ice that sits out in the Bering Sea and stays around for a very long time. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: And so that came out of that and Bud was able to nail that down and show that you could tell early in the year where the remnants were going to be and how big they were going to be. KAREN BREWSTER: Huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: That's in that thing, too.

And then we talked to the Navy about that one time and that was really of interest to them because you could hide a submarine under that stuff very easily, see. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh.

LEW SHAPIRO: Because, you know, just because you can’t do sonar. The sonar doesn’t work well because of the differences in water temperature structure. KAREN BREWSTER: Huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: So they -- we talked to one guy who was doing that kind of thing. And wow, I'll have to go back and look at that. You never hear any more about it, of course. KAREN BREWSTER: Right.

LEW SHAPIRO: But he was interested in it. He was a guy who was working for the Navy undersea lab at the time. KAREN BREWSTER: Huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: And John knew -- John knew him because, you know, again they were interested in ice around this area.

KAREN BREWSTER: And John was out in Nome at the time probably? LEW SHAPIRO: No, he was back here. KAREN BREWSTER: He was back here, yeah.

LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah. So, but anyway, you know, so we collaborated on that, and that was a lot of fun to do. We did -- we did that for a long time. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

LEW SHAPIRO: Worked on that. So, but that's where that came about. So it was the first -- they were just the first pictures that we got.

Did you ever hear of Katie’s Floeberg? KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-uh.

LEW SHAPIRO: You must know that name. That big massive ice off NARL out here that sets up every year.

That was -- turned up in the first -- on top of one of those pictures. KAREN BREWSTER: Say that again, what is --

LEW SHAPIRO: Katie’s Floeberg KAREN BREWSTER: Katie’s --

LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah. Katie March. She was the woman that was running the lab at the data center at that time.

KAREN BREWSTER: Katie’s Floeberg off NARL.

LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah. Bill Stringer wrote something about it. KAREN BREWSTER: Okay.

LEW SHAPIRO: But it was on the same sequence of pictures up here. KAREN BREWSTER: Huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: But we just worked -- we just picked off these and worked with those.

KAREN BREWSTER: Well, speaking of NARL, so you started going up to Barrow to do research when? LEW SHAPIRO: Ninety -- ’74.

KAREN BREWSTER: So was NARL still in operation?

LEW SHAPIRO: Oh, yeah, sure. It was operated -- it operated until ’80, ’81.

KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, yeah, and UIC took it over I think in ’80, yeah. LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah somewhere --

KAREN BREWSTER: So, but Max Brewer was no longer in charge.

LEW SHAPIRO: No, Max was gone, yeah and Schindler was gone I think.

KAREN BREWSTER: So was Brian Shoemaker the guy in charge?

LEW SHAPIRO: I don’t remember who the first one was.

KAREN BREWSTER: When you were there?

LEW SHAPIRO: Then Warren Denner was the guy that was there most of the time that I was there. KAREN BREWSTER: Okay.

LEW SHAPIRO: And then -- then I dropped out -- I was up there pretty steady from ’74 till ’81, I think.

And then I went back again in about ’88 after UIC had it. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: And was there -- worked there -- I’m not sure -- I don’t remember when the last one was -- probably late --

KAREN BREWSTER: You said before mid-90’s maybe. '96, ’97. LEW SHAPIRO: It was ’96, ’97, ’98 somewhere in there.

KAREN BREWSTER: Okay.

LEW SHAPIRO: We were breaking ice. There was a documentary done for -- on Richard Glenn. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh. LEW SHAPIRO: I don’t know if you knew that. KAREN BREWSTER: No, I don’t --

LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah, he was -- it was on Richard. It was done by PBS, in fact, by W -- the station from Boston. KAREN BREWSTER: WGBH? LEW SHAPIRO: No, yeah, whatever it is. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah, that’s the Boston one.

LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah, they did one and it was on -- they were talking about three different scientists. One guy was like an African-American guy who was doing string theory.

And then Richard working on sea ice. And I forget who the third guy was and that he was doing something, but they were interested in, you know, in members of minority groups -- KAREN BREWSTER: Right.

LEW SHAPIRO: -- who were pushing along in science and at that time Richard was working on a Ph.D. with us. KAREN BREWSTER: Right.

LEW SHAPIRO: And so we were up there. We were splitting ice -- breaking ice working with another group.

It was a combination of me from here -- people from here -- me and somebody from CRREL and somebody from Clarkson University.

But anyway we had these -- these ice, you know, ice fracture experiments going on and I was working -- I was doing that.

KAREN BREWSTER: And that was -- so that was the 80’s and 90’s, right?

LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah, well early 90’s. KAREN BREWSTER: Okay. LEW SHAPIRO: At some point -- I don’t remember the dates.

KAREN BREWSTER: So ’74 to ’81 -- LEW SHAPIRO: That was OCSEAP.

KAREN BREWSTER: And that’s when you had your wannagan out on the ice? LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah, that’s when we -- yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: Same thing you were doing. LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah, breaking ice. KAREN BREWSTER: Structural.

LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah, structural pro -- yeah, yeah. And then the stuff with the radar was just kind of a sideline to that.

Because it was there and we were there so we could just look at it and if something happened maybe you could go out and see what was going on. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: But that was -- that was -- it was sort of in the background.

KAREN BREWSTER: So as a precursor to Hajo's video camera that he has mounted that you can --

LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah, we actually had one up there for a little while. A little eight millimeter. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh yeah.

LEW SHAPIRO: In fact, they're pretty good pictures -- are actually -- we picked up some really interesting stuff on it.

But we had it just for a little while -- just a little eight millimeter camera that would take a picture every -- every couple minutes or something take one frame.

KAREN BREWSTER: Huh. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about -- you mentioned working with Kenny Toovak on that interviewing project, but your working with the Inupiat people in Barrow and --

LEW SHAPIRO: Well, Kenny -- Kenny was -- he was -- ran a shop -- one of the shops I guess at NARL when the Navy had it. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: So he kind of went out of the game, you know, at that point. And then when I went away -- when I came back I mean I always knew him so I used to see him a lot.

KAREN BREWSTER: Well, when you went up in ’74 they were -- it was still --

LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah, he was busy then. He was running things. But I used to, you know, I’d see him off and on even after I went -- after I was working back up there again later, but --

and that was really more when I -- well I shouldn’t say that -- I knew him both times, but I always talked to him a lot and asked him questions.

He was always very coming, you know, very open with answers and so on so I learned a lot about how to look at things.

How to look at it up there -- things to look for. And he was just so -- you know, I just got along very well with him. I liked him. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

LEW SHAPIRO: And so -- and I could always go to him with questions. And it was just fun to sit down and talk to him about ice.

But I didn’t have much contact with other people because my -- my -- my, you know, I had a wife and kids who were small kids here and so when I had to go up there I went and I did my work and got back out. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: And so I never did stay around there that much. Ron Metzner knew a lot of the people up there.

KAREN BREWSTER: Right. So your fieldwork you were there for a few days or a few weeks?

LEW SHAPIRO: A few days or a couple of weeks or something like that, but I don’t think I was ever up there for more than about 10 days or so.

KAREN BREWSTER: Well, I didn’t know if you ever had a local person go with you and do your -- help with your experiments and your lab work? LEW SHAPIRO: No. KAREN BREWSTER: No. LEW SHAPIRO: No.

KAREN BREWSTER: It was just you guys out on the ice?

LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah. Yeah. And then, oh, later on I mean, you know, somebody would haul me around on a snowmachine or something like that and I worked with Richard -- well, Richard Glenn. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: But for the most part I knew my way around up there well enough that I could do things. In fact, there was a time there after UIC took over when -- I mean I had keys to half their buildings up there.

Of course, I was doing, you know, I had things going on all over the place. KAREN BREWSTER: Right. LEW SHAPIRO: And it was easier for them to just here are Shapiro keys, you know. I used to go up and get them and I could get into these various buildings.

We had a truck parked in one place with this big saw on and, you know, just all sorts of things.

KAREN BREWSTER: Well, people -- people knew you. You'd been going there for --

LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah. And so and I was pretty well trusted and so I never stole anything or anything. Took care of stuff. KAREN BREWSTER: And did --

LEW SHAPIRO: But then, you know, when -- they got -- they took over and gradually things changed. KAREN BREWSTER: Right. LEW SHAPIRO: You know, which is what you'd expect.

KAREN BREWSTER: Right. Well, I was wondering if you felt like you learned things about the ice from the local people.

LEW SHAPIRO: Well, I did from Kenny, for sure. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: And but I -- but -- as I say I never had that much interaction with people other than that and --

but that was just the nature of me. First of all, there wasn’t much they could help me with in terms of, you know, busting ice. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: And I mean it's just not something that they were concerned about.

They knew it was strong, but they, you know, but they have other -- they knew enough to -- but they knew the ice -- they -- they, but they couldn’t put numbers on it basically.

One of the first assistants we had up there was a guy by the name of Tom Hanley who was a Jesuit Priest. He had a Ph.D. in ice physics and he was a good -- he was a friend of Tom Osterkamp’s. He had a Ph.D. from St. Louis University, I think.

And so once he finished his Ph.D. he was -- he worked up there for us for a year -- the first year we were up there -- that went through ’73, ’74. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: He was up there looking around and trying to do things.

But he -- he told me once that he -- I remember talking to him and saying that people were, "what are you trying to do," you know. What, you know, locals --

And he finally said that the best answer he'd come up with, he said, "we’re trying to put numbers on the things that you already know," see. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: And so they have -- they intuitively know things from experience. And basically, you know, if you’re an engineer you need a number.

So essentially that was it. It was just basically trying to translate the world into numbers that, you know, into things that people who had -- had to

OSCEAP anyway -- KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh. LEW SHAPIRO: People who had a need for that information could understand and use. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: That's basically what it's about.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. And it sounds like the local people didn’t particularly pay attention to your experiments cause it didn’t -- LEW SHAPIRO: It --

KAREN BREWSTER: Wasn’t so meaningful to them?

LEW SHAPIRO: Well, I don’t know. I mean people would come by occasionally and stop and what are you doing, you know.

We’d show them, but, you know, it -- It's not their sort of thing. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: It didn’t -- it didn’t -- it didn’t relate to what they needed to know. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: I mean they were interested that we were knowing -- that we were trying to find these things out, but it was not something that they could use. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: And I mean it doesn’t help them to know what Young’s modulation of ice at a certain -- over a certain range or something like that.

That sort of information just isn’t useful to them.

KAREN BREWSTER: Right. But they certainly know about the ice dynamics and what’s -- LEW SHAPIRO: Well -- KAREN BREWSTER: -- moving and coming and going.

LEW SHAPIRO: Oh, yeah sure. Well, that’s -- that’s much more of interest to them. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: Sure. And that’s where -- that and just general features of the ice cover.

I mean there were things that they couldn’t find out, okay, you know. For example, they -- they -- they couldn’t know -- they knew about -- they knew there was ice in the barrier islands, you know. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: That there's ice in the barrier, but a lot of that I think was -- is fresh water ice. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, really.

LEW SHAPIRO: It's frozen rain water. Some of it is anyway at the top, but I don’t think they could know that very well.

Anyway, we found places we did a little bit of seismic work up there in ’74, and it looked like that's what we had was like a lens of ice near the surface, and then when you got down below it wasn’t frozen anymore.

KAREN BREWSTER: So it was fresh water ice on the surface?

LEW SHAPIRO: Might have been, yeah, I don’t remember, but, I mean, this is -- that's all sort of vague. That was not --

that was a project that Rogers was doing -- that Jim Rogers was doing and a couple of other people and we went up there to help them do the seismic stuff.

KAREN BREWSTER: And that was along the barrier islands?

LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah, on some of the barrier islands. They weren’t just -- they were drilling out there at the time.

There was a -- Sea Grant was funding some work, in fact, I think the rig that the guy -- Bob Llewellyn, the guy that was doing it, he was drilling out there and I think the rig or at least the structure for the rig is still sitting up there on the road if you go -- going out towards -- go up past Spenard and go up on the road and there's -- KAREN BREWSTER: Huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: A thing up there. The old rig. The building I think is still sitting there.

At least it was the last time I was up there. I haven't been there in years.

KAREN BREWSTER: Out on the old runway out there?

LEW SHAPIRO: Well, right along the beach. You go up along the road -- the beach road.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah, but not on the beach side. There's --

LEW SHAPIRO: No, it’s not on the beach side. KAREN BREWSTER: It's on --

LEW SHAPIRO: It's just on the other side, yeah. But anyway -- but, you know, they were interested in that so --

Again just for the ideas, you know, people knew there was perma -- it had to be permafrost and so they were looking for it. And I don’t know. I mean I just -- it's been a long time since I --

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. Well, and also as I told you before I'm sort of interested in NARL as a place and what it was like working there. LEW SHAPIRO: Uh-huh. KAREN BREWSTER: And the atmosphere there.

LEW SHAPIRO: NARL was a good place to work. It always was -- I mean when I was there.

It was easy to work. I mean, you know, if you had a Navy approved project you just went in and did your work. The stuff was there. You could get -- pretty much get what you needed.

I understand -- I mean I never had any. By the time I got there, the management had changed and whatever equipment they had was -- they were pretty generous with it. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: And then also with OCSEAP. I mean OCSEAP had logistics money up there so if I wanted -- you know, the first thing I always did when I got up there, you know, every month or so or whenever I got there I would ask to go up for a flight. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh. LEW SHAPIRO: Just to go out --

KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, to survey by air?

LEW SHAPIRO: Just around the air just so I could see what things looked like. And so you could always get those sorts of things and so --

There were no snowmachines, though. Couldn’t get a snowmachine. They didn't have snowmachines, but so we used to -- we did a lot of walking.

KAREN BREWSTER: There were no snow -- because there weren’t any -- people weren’t using them yet or they just didn’t have any?

LEW SHAPIRO: NARL didn’t have any on there at that time. They may have had some, but we -- I couldn’t get any. I never could get them.

And a lot of it I didn’t need them. There were times I would go up there and I’d never get any further offshore than 300 feet just to get out to our shack. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh. LEW SHAPIRO: To our shack, so --

KAREN BREWSTER: And you wouldn’t go into town at all?

LEW SHAPIRO: Very seldom. KAREN BREWSTER: Huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: Very seldom. We just didn’t need to.

I mean, I wasn’t up there long. People that are going to be there for a while they wanted to go into Pepe’s or something like that. KAREN BREWSTER: Right.

LEW SHAPIRO: You know, but -- and I did that a few times, but for the most part I really wasn’t interested in doing that. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: I mean, I just wanted to get in and do my work and get back here.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. Well, and as you say you weren’t there for long periods of time at once, but you were there repeatedly over many years. LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah. Yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: So you -- LEW SHAPIRO: I would spend --

KAREN BREWSTER: -- have a perspective that way.

LEW SHAPIRO: I would spend anywhere from -- from mid-January to mid-May, I might spend anywhere from, you know, 40, 50, 60 days up there.

KAREN BREWSTER: That’s a lot. LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah, but any --

KAREN BREWSTER: Even though it's not consecutively.

LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah, I was up there a lot though. It just depended on what we were doing and how things were going.

KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh. And so at NARL -- was at that time did they still have, you know, the cafeteria and everybody came and ate there?

LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah, yeah, they were still using the Quonsets. KAREN BREWSTER: You were still -- okay.

LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah, they were still in the Quonsets. The mess hall was still in the Quonsets.

KAREN BREWSTER: And did the scientists and the staff and the local staff all interact together?

LEW SHAPIRO: Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was the most interesting place to go to because to be working on ice there was really something because it would turn out that whoever you were sitting next to was interested in ice.

It didn’t make any difference what they were. I mean the guy doing polar bears or the guy doing birds, the guy doing amphipods under the ice or something like that, they all had interests in sea ice.

And so there was lots of interesting conversation. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh. LEW SHAPIRO: And it was -- it was a very interesting place.

At certain times of the year when there were active projects there, there were always interesting people going through.

KAREN BREWSTER: In January, you may have been the only ones there?

LEW SHAPIRO: At the start, but as you go through the season, yeah, things would build up and people would come up to do things.

And they needed daylight or something.

KAREN BREWSTER: Right. And -- but I've always wondered -- I don’t know how it was at NARL if the scientists and the local people ate together and chatted together with you guys.

LEW SHAPIRO: Well, everybody -- everybody who was working at NARL and could use the mess hall. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: Was in there at one time or another so you -- I mean you’d wind up talking to just about anybody. KAREN BREWSTER: Okay.

LEW SHAPIRO: Couldn’t tell. I mean, you know, there were little cliques, you know, you go in with friends and so on, but, you know, you’d sit down at a table and start eating and somebody that you didn’t know would come up and you'd pretty much you’d be in a conversation -- KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: And whatever they were interested in is what you would be talking about.

So it was kind of an interesting community and it was -- it was also kind of isolated -- KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: -- in the sense, you know, that the staff that were up there all the time had their own games -- their own things to do. KAREN BREWSTER: Right.

LEW SHAPIRO: And so on and so they, you know, there was that -- there was that -- that difference if you will.

KAREN BREWSTER: Like the Navy’s -- I don’t, you know, like the administrative --

LEW SHAPIRO: Well, there's only one Navy up there. KAREN BREWSTER: The administrative -- LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah, there was only one Navy guy up there. KAREN BREWSTER: By that time, yeah.

LEW SHAPIRO: He was a Naval commander. Then the Coast Guard station. There was a Coast Guard station down which is now well, I don’t know what it is now, but the building is down close to Browerville.

Used to be a Coast Guard down there. They had a fence around it and so on, but I think it's UIC headquarters. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, yeah, yeah, okay.

LEW SHAPIRO: So they were -- there were some Coast Guard people there. In fact, one of the guys from the Coast Guard was -- took care of the radar for us for a while.

KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, yeah. But yeah, the staff that was there you mean the non-Native staff who -- LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah, I mean -- KAREN BREWSTER: The administrative?

LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah, the -- there was like, you know, biologists and the guys that ran the, you know, they had this big -- the colony of --

KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, the animal colony, right. LEW SHAPIRO: The animal colony, yeah. That's where Craig George started, I think. KAREN BREWSTER: Right. He did.

LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah, his -- and his cousin of his worked up there, too. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh. Right.

LEW SHAPIRO: For a long time. In fact, what was her name Kate something or other. I think it was his girlfriend. Not Craig, but Craig’s cousin.

She was mushing some place or other and went on Mt. McKinley, but she did the -- she did the radar for us for a while, too. KAREN BREWSTER: Huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: And we said -- we had somebody up there who was hired to, you know, who we would pay just to go up and change the film every three days and that sort of thing. KAREN BREWSTER: Cool.

LEW SHAPIRO: So that was the way we got -- that was the way we ran our radar.

KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh. And then you stayed in Quonsets? They had --

LEW SHAPIRO: No, we stayed in -- in the main NARL building.

KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, at that point that was already --

LEW SHAPIRO: It was all -- it was like a hotel. I mean rooms that, you know, rooms down there.

KAREN BREWSTER: So you had your own rooms?

LEW SHAPIRO: Well, there were two or three beds in a room. Depended on who was there and whether you might have to share and sometimes you might have it by yourself. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: That just sort of varied. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

LEW SHAPIRO: That was before there was -- It was not the NARL hotel then. It was just the -- I mean it was just NARL and then after -- after the Navy left that’s when Dario took over -- KAREN BREWSTER: Right. LEW SHAPIRO: And started running it.

KAREN BREWSTER: Right, but -- but say you -- LEW SHAPIRO: He did that. KAREN BREWSTER: Staying in the main building --

LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah, we were in the main building.

KAREN BREWSTER: -- versus in earlier periods they were all living out in the Quonsets and stuff. LEW SHAPIRO: Well, they’d -- yeah --

KAREN BREWSTER: Before that big building was built.

LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah, yeah. I don’t know where they stayed. There were a couple of other big Quonsets, yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

LEW SHAPIRO: No, they had the building. The building was there when I got there. KAREN BREWSTER: Okay.

LEW SHAPIRO: And it was pretty good and I used two wings down there. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: And lots of beds in there. It was comfortable. It was a reasonable place.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. I kind of have this feeling in the -- that maybe it was the earlier time period than when you were there that -- or maybe because people were there for a whole summer field season that there was a lot of camaraderie -- LEW SHAPIRO: Probably, yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: -- and practical jokes and stuff, but that may not have been your experience.

LEW SHAPIRO: No, because when we were there, as I say, it was during the winter and there weren’t that many people there.

There're people come in, like I say, to work on -- KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: You know, there were polar bear people used to come in and so on. You know, there were -- there were -- the State had -- the State Fish & Wildlife was doing polar bears at that time.

KAREN BREWSTER: That would -- was that Jack Lentfer?

LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah, Jack Lentfer, so he would come up there for a while and things like that, but they needed decent weather for it. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: So, you know, these things timed -- they were timed around that, but there were people up there year round that were trying to do some things.

But it was not -- not all that much -- not that many of them.

KAREN BREWSTER: Right, and so you never spent time on the ice islands then?

LEW SHAPIRO: No, I didn’t have time for that. No, that was not what I was interested in doing.

I was interested in mechanical properties and that stuff of looking at what was going on near shore was just kind of a sideline to it, because I was there and the radar was there.

KAREN BREWSTER: Right. Well, I think maybe I would conclude with a couple of reflective --

Looking back on your career kind of questions and I know you’re very humble and you don’t think you’ve done anything important, but other people do.

LEW SHAPIRO: Alright, well, that’s interesting.

KAREN BREWSTER: So how do you respond? Like what do you think you’ve contributed in terms of understanding of ice?

LEW SHAPIRO: Phew -- I don’t know.

KAREN BREWSTER: Is there something you're particularly proud of in any of your projects? LEW SHAPIRO: No, no. KAREN BREWSTER: That you think -- None?

LEW SHAPIRO: No, not really because I know -- I never -- oh, everything was a series of little steps I guess. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: And that’s about all. And I think of the steps. I don’t think of any great overarching, overriding sort of things.

I suppose that if somebody else thinks I did something then maybe I did. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh. LEW SHAPIRO: But, I don't -- KAREN BREWSTER: Well --

LEW SHAPIRO: Actually your contribution is mainly in the, you know, in the people -- in the students so to speak.

And I never really had any sea ice students, except one guy. Because at the time I was doing this stuff I always felt like I needed more support from the Department of Mechanics -- KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: And we just didn’t have it here. So I wasn’t real keen on taking in students because I wasn’t interested in the -- in the chemistry so much as in the mechanics side of it. KAREN BREWSTER: Huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: And so there was never -- but I never felt like I had the support of other places in the university. We just didn’t have the departments here at the time. KAREN BREWSTER: Right. LEW SHAPIRO: To do it.

In fact, they once asked me if I wanted to teach one of the courses and I could never have done that. I wasn’t good enough to do that.

KAREN BREWSTER: So you -- you were a research faculty?

LEW SHAPIRO: Well, no -- well, at that time there was -- I was actually -- I was teaching stuff for geology. KAREN BREWSTER: Okay.

LEW SHAPIRO: I taught about mechanics and some structural geology and then from 1982 till 1990, I think, yeah, I taught all the structural geology.

KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, okay. And did you have geology grad students then? LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah, yeah. KAREN BREWSTER: Okay.

LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah, I did, yeah. Yeah. One of them's with the State Oil & Gas Commission now. One of them was working with, oh, Red Dog Mine. And he was unfortunately killed in an accident. KAREN BREWSTER: Huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: One guy is in the oil industry down in Texas. Another guy is doing water resources stuff for Forest Service somewhere in the state of Washington. KAREN BREWSTER: Huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: A woman working on getting research position Oil and Gas Institute I think it is -- research in natural gas.

She went from here to Texas A&M and did her Ph.D. You know, so I mean, you know, the people have sort of scattered that way.

KAREN BREWSTER: It's interesting that you didn’t have any sea ice graduates.

LEW SHAPIRO: My one -- my one sea ice graduate student was a guy from Japan and he's still in sea ice.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah, well, that’s good.

LEW SHAPIRO: He had a Master’s Degree from -- in Hokaido. He came here and got another Master’s Degree in Geophysics and went back and did a Ph.D. at Hokaido. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, cool.

LEW SHAPIRO: And he's teaching now in northern Japan. KAREN BREWSTER: Huh. LEW SHAPIRO: So I mean, you know, there's been a few. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: It's really hard to say. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

LEW SHAPIRO: I mean whatever influence you have is, you know, it's what people take away.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. Well, what's been the most fun for you about doing this work? Obviously you've kept doing it. LEW SHAPIRO: Phoof --

KAREN BREWSTER: What’s motivated you to keep doing it?

LEW SHAPIRO: Well, I don’t know. Well, first of all there wasn’t any place else to go.

KAREN BREWSTER: Well, you could have not continued to do sea ice. You could have gone back to --

LEW SHAPIRO: Well, I taught it for -- I taught it for a while, but I got to the point, you know, part of it was just the structure here. I mean I was in the Geophysical Institute with the responsibility to raise funds and do research and things like that. KAREN BREWSTER: Huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: And I could do it in sea ice. The thing that -- but I was teaching geology -- teaching in the Geology Department and, you know, it was hard to do.

I was teaching, you know, three courses -- two or three courses. I taught -- I taught undergraduate structure. I taught two different graduate courses -- structures and Structural Geology.

And I taught field methods for a couple years. And had graduate students down there and did a couple of graduate seminars.

So I was busy down there, but I couldn’t keep doing that and do sea ice, you know, and, you know, I couldn’t raise money here because the only place I could raise it really was through doing sea ice. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: And so at some point when there were people hired who could do my courses, then at that time the number of students started dropping off because it was just cyclic against the industry, you know. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: Compared what the industry does.

At that point it was just easier. I mean I had to do something. I had to go one way or the other and the university offered a RIP .

So I had already gotten some work started up at Barrow with Willy and Richard Glenn when he come on as a graduate student.

Had some things going on up there and so I decided that I would just take that early retirement thing. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: So I did that in 1990. My last official working day was February 28, 1990.

KAREN BREWSTER: You still know. That’s pretty amazing.

LEW SHAPIRO: Oh, yeah, yeah, it was a Friday night. Friday, February 28, 1990 and two days later I was in Barrow working on the same project.

KAREN BREWSTER: So that meant you -- you didn’t have to do the teaching. LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: You didn’t have to do the fundraising, but you could still --

LEW SHAPIRO: Oh, I was still -- I was doing a lot -- I did more fundraising after that.

KAREN BREWSTER: So it meant you didn’t have to teach. You could still do the research you wanted to do. LEW SHAPIRO: Well, I had to do it, yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah, okay. LEW SHAPIRO: So I was able to do it. I was pretty successful at it. And got some good projects. Navy started a sea ice mechanics initiative and we had some money in that.

And then there was just a number of things that came along after that.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah, so there must've been something fun about --

LEW SHAPIRO: Oh, yeah, well, you know, you always enjoy doing it, you know, but never -- but I can’t point to any one particular thing that I'd say was a real landmark -- something that was really --

KAREN BREWSTER: Well, what you found most rewarding about doing this kind of work? LEW SHAPIRO: Oh, I don’t know.

It's hard to say. I really can’t think of anything in particular. It was just, I guess, just the general process of going. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: It's not so much a landmark. It's just, you know, it's what life is, you know. It's just a -- It's a process.

KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh. Well, are you glad you did all the -- sea ice -- that you went into that?

LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah, I am. It turned out to be good.

I had a lot of interesting experiences. I got my one trip to Antarctica which I never wanted to do, but I did it.

I spent a year working with ARCO just -- instead of going on sabbatical I went down to ARCO’s --

It was 1981 or ’82. They had an Arctic Technology Lab down in Texas so we were down there for a year. Instead of going on sabbatical I went into the industry for a year, then I did some consulting for them for a few years after that. We did -- we got involved in some of the early -- the drilling stuff in the Bering Sea. KAREN BREWSTER: Huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: I was consulting for them on the ice problems if you will.

And it gave me good connection with the industry and so I understood more about how the industry works and what they do.

It was just an interesting learning periods.

KAREN BREWSTER: Well, and it's interesting talking to you and coming to understand the real close connection between your research on sea ice dynamics and engineering.

LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah, that's -- that's sort of what --

KAREN BREWSTER: I didn’t realize that that’s -- you did that.

LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah, that was really -- that was the connection. In fact, that was one of the reasons I could talk to the people in the industry and when I was doing this consulting work,

because that was what they were interested in at the time. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: Is this connection between the science, you know, the science learning new stuff and the engineering part of it. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: And so -- I mean that was -- that was a big thing. That was interesting to do. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah.

LEW SHAPIRO: And you know it was just a whole series of new things as you're going along. I mean it's not, you know, not sitting in the lab, but going to --

going to new places or trying to do new things or trying to do -- trying to do new things in -- do things in a different way, I guess.

KAREN BREWSTER: Well, we've sort of been talking a little bit before about how, you know, the ice conditions now are changing from -- LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: -- maybe what they were when you were -- LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: -- doing a lot of your work. What about the field of sea ice research in general and how has that changed through your career and how do you see that going into the future?

LEW SHAPIRO: Well, first of all, equipment's much better now. People can, you know, you still got to go out and get your hands cold.

You know that’s -- that’s -- that’s a given. You're going to have to do that, but, you know, the science has moved along and also there's -- there's better observational stuff now.

You know, nobody was running submarines around under the ice when we were doing this stuff. I mean the first ones were going on at that time, I think.

Upward looking sonars and now they're, you know, they're just all sorts of new equipment and new ways of handling things.

There's a huge, huge databank now of, you know, of observations of movement of buoy movement -- not ice movement so much but movement of buoys that are attached to the ice that sort of thing so. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: There's -- then there's -- there's a much more of a backlog of information that's around. There just wasn’t that much.

I mean Willy used to say when he got into sea ice the reason he got into it was -- one of the reasons was there was no literature, you know.

He didn’t have to read so much.

And so -- and it's true. I mean he contributed a lot to the literature, but there wasn’t a great literature because there wasn’t a whole lot there.

And that's one of the things that maybe I liked, too. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: There just wasn’t a great deal.

KAREN BREWSTER: Right. And now there is.

LEW SHAPIRO: And now there's a lot. You can spend, you know, spend your time reading the literature.

KAREN BREWSTER: So is there something that you think the sea ice researchers in the future should be looking at? Is there something going on that hasn’t been done?

LEW SHAPIRO: Oh, wow.

KAREN BREWSTER: Or that you might not have time to get to in your lifetime?

LEW SHAPIRO: Well, I don’t know. I don’t really know. I’ve started to think about some other kind of off-the-wall things, but I’m really -- I really don’t want to talk about those things yet. KAREN BREWSTER: Okay.

LEW SHAPIRO: I don’t want to get into -- into arguments with people on it.

But, you know, there's -- there's some things that are going to change and some views are going to change, I think.

I don’t know. I just don’t know. The big thing now, of course, is climate. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: And that’s really what's motivating most -- much of the work now. Not all of it, but the engineering stuff I think has kind of gone by the boards for the time being.

Simply because for now I think the oil industry as far as they’re concerned they can pretty much handle most of what -- I mean they can overwhelm the ice. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: I mean I always said, you know, from day one you could say if you were willing to spend enough money you could build something that you could put any place out there and it would stand.

It's just you can’t afford to do it.

So, you know, but I think that for the time being I think things are okay. I don’t, you know, Shell was drilling the eastern Beaufort Sea and that’s -- they’ve learned a lot about -- and the Chukchi stuff, too, and that would all be developed on the subsea -- on the seafloor.

You wouldn’t see anything on the surface. You wouldn’t need anything. And the experience for that comes from the North Sea. They have been doing it there.

KAREN BREWSTER: But the North Sea doesn’t have the ice --

LEW SHAPIRO: Doesn’t have ice, but everything is -- but they've developed this technology for doing things on the seafloor.

KAREN BREWSTER: So those things they’ll do it -- it won’t matter what’s happening with the ice. It's all under water?

LEW SHAPIRO: It's all going to be on the seafloor until you get -- until you cross onto land. That’s the only place you’d -- KAREN BREWSTER: Right.

LEW SHAPIRO: That may be the only place you have a problem, see.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah, cause then you're in the nearshore. LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: Very dynamic environment.

LEW SHAPIRO: Yes, that’s a different environment, so you have to get across that, but this stuff in deeper water they'll probably be down on the seafloor.

KAREN BREWSTER: Huh -- interesting, interesting.

LEW SHAPIRO: So I mean so -- but on the other hand you still have other -- there's problems there. It's not like it's just all that easy.

KAREN BREWSTER: Well, and you mentioned climate, that it certainly seems that climate drives a lot of the -- LEW SHAPIRO: Uh-huh.

KAREN BREWSTER: -- issues and the viewpoint now. LEW SHAPIRO: Uh-huh.

KAREN BREWSTER: But when you were -- in the 70’s or starting that wasn’t something anybody thought about.

LEW SHAPIRO: No, no, no -- at that time, I mean not for me anyway. Somebody may have been thinking about it. Somebody probably was, and the meteorologists were certainly thinking about it. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: Not so much from a climate point of view, but just from wind ice interactions. KAREN BREWSTER: Right. And as you --

LEW SHAPIRO: And currents and there's still a lot of work that could be done on subsea currents and the way currents affect the ice motion and so on. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: There are things like that. I mean there are -- there are good research fields still available.

KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh. Well, so it -- when you started instead of climate it was this engineering -- LEW SHAPIRO: Just understanding -- KAREN BREWSTER: Understanding.

LEW SHAPIRO: -- the environment because you were trying to do things. KAREN BREWSTER: Right, okay.

LEW SHAPIRO: That’s -- that’s a good way to --

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. That’s what I was saying. LEW SHAPIRO: At least that was my view. It was trying to understand it because there were things to be done. KAREN BREWSTER: Right.

LEW SHAPIRO: CRREL was always -- even the guys with CREEL that were doing the science were also very practical. I mean they would -- they had real science, you know, real engineering problems that they were trying to do.

KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh. Well, and you mentioned current -- From my experience of living in Barrow and talking with Inupiat people, wind and current and understanding -- LEW SHAPIRO: Uh-huh.

KAREN BREWSTER: -- ice behavior in those context -- LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: -- seems what -- that’s what they really know a lot about.

LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah. And for good reason.

KAREN BREWSTER: Right. And, but that’s not what you were working on so you didn’t talk to them so much.

LEW SHAPIRO: Not so much about that. I mean basically the idea was, you know, what drives ice up on the beach. KAREN BREWSTER: Right.

LEW SHAPIRO: And, you know, and there's a role for water and then not so much -- not necessarily the current,

but you know water level. KAREN BREWSTER: Huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: Weather systems changing the sea level and so on. That sort of thing.

KAREN BREWSTER: So wind and current doesn’t affect those push ups? LEW SHAPIRO: Oh, yeah, wind -- wind does. KAREN BREWSTER: But current doesn’t. LEW SHAPIRO: Well, I don’t know. KAREN BREWSTER: Huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: Nobody's measuring currents. They don’t -- you don’t measure currents that close in because you can’t leave a meter there very long. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: You can go out and do spot things, but you can’t leave a current meter there.

KAREN BREWSTER: But so those ice push ups were influenced by the water height and --

LEW SHAPIRO: I think the water level has something to do with it. KAREN BREWSTER: And the wind too?

LEW SHAPIRO: And wind -- wind direction -- something's got to drive it, but it may not be the local wind.

I mean basically a friend of mine Bob Pritchard used to always say what moves ice? Well, the reason a piece of ice moves is because the piece of ice next to it moves.

So, you know, everything sort of pushes along. KAREN BREWSTER: Right.

LEW SHAPIRO: So you can be pushing ice from a long distance away just, you know, weather system somewhere is tightening the pack up and eventually it comes piling up on the beach.

But it may have started, you know, a couple hundred miles away. KAREN BREWSTER: Right. LEW SHAPIRO: Or something -- more than that.

KAREN BREWSTER: Well, and I also found it interesting that, you know, what happens with the ice off of Barrow is affected by different winds and things than if you're in Point Hope or if you're in -- LEW SHAPIRO: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: Kaktovik or some place. LEW SHAPIRO: Because of what --

KAREN BREWSTER: Because the geography and the winds are different.

LEW SHAPIRO: The winds and the orientation to coast relative to the wind directions and so on. KAREN BREWSTER: Uh-huh.

LEW SHAPIRO: So the environments are all different -- the local environments.

KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. Well thank you very much. I don’t know if there's anything else I haven’t asked you that you want to talk about, but --

LEW SHAPIRO: Well, I don’t know.