nial Medal which placed him in some pretty impressive company.
Working with Dr. Clyde Roper and the folks at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, Gene helped to put In Search of Giant Squid online, an exhibition which explores and interprets the mystery, beauty and complexity of giant squids - the world's largest invertebrates and was based upon material presented in the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History's exhibit In Search of Giant Squid.
In 1997, Clyde Roper lead a team of scientists to the depths of Kaikoura Canyon off the coast of New Zealand on An Expedition into the Depths of the Last Frontier.
During February and March 1999, Clyde Roper returned to Kaikoura Canyon
to continue the exploration of this incredible ecosystem. This time, Gene
went along to help document the expedition as it took place.
On a more recent trip to that part of the world, Gene learned first hand what the expression "going to the devil" really meant.
Using tools developed for Ocean Planet, Norman Kuring and Gene worked with the Smithsonian's Office of Printing and Photographic Services to develop a Web-based utility to Search and Retrieve Images from The Smithsonian Photographic Services Data Base. Using
this tool, it is possible to quickly and efficiently search through almost 1,000 image files covering topics ranging from Air and Space, to Science, Nature, Technology, History, and People-Places and to retrieve the images and captions.
To help celebrate the Smithsonian Institution's 150th Anniversary, Gene and Norman created a way for people around the world to wish the Smithsonian a happy birthday.
For the JASON IX Expedition, Gene was onboard the research ship R/V Atlantis (April 17-26, 1998) the newest
research vessel from the Woods Hole's Oceanographic Institution where researchers used both the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) JASON and the manned submersible Alvin to explore the hydrothermal vent communities a mile beneath the Sea of Cortez.
In addition to helping provide daily updates of all the activities onboard the Atlantis live via satellite over the internet, Gene also collected daily measurements to help verify the atmospheric correction algorithms for SeaWiFS. Also, the Atlantis provided a great subject for photography.
Finally satisfying a lifelong dream, Gene spent two weeks standing watches, chipping paint, swabbing decks, tarring footropes, washing dishes, scraping and painting knees, pumping bilges, hauling lines, climbing ratlines, furling sails and in general, having an incredible experience, as he sailed onboard the wooden tallship "HMS" Rose from Miami to New York City. Not long after this trip, the HMS Rose was completely refit and was reborn as the HMS Surprise, appearing in the 20th Century fox film Master and Commander: Far Side of the World starring Russell Crowe and directed by Peter Weir.
More recently, Gene has been involved in helping tell the story of the Ben Franklin, a research submersible built by the Grumman Aerospace Corporation that at 8:56 P.M. July 14, 1969, carrying six brave aquanauts, slipped beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Palm Beach, Florida on a mission to explore the secrets of the Gulf Stream. This longest privately-sponsored undersea experiment which NASA took part in, ended more than 30-days and 1,444 nautical miles later, when the Franklin and its crew surfaced some 300 miles south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, at 7:58 A.M. August 14, 1969.
As they say, the rest is history.....a history that largely remained untold, until now.
A one-hour documentary including a special interview with Walter Cronkite has just been broadcast on the Discovery's Science Channel. Telling the story of the Ben Franklin and the Apollo 11 mission to the moon that by a quirk of fate took place during the same week in July 1969, these two missions ended a decade of exploration, unsurpassed and as yet unequaled in human history.
After studying the Galapagos Islands from space for over twenty-five years, Gene was finally able to follow in Darwin's footsteps and visit 