Richard W. Murray, a College of Arts & Sciences professor of earth and environment, has spent the past 25 years exploring the ocean, leading elite teams of seagoing scientists who sample the ocean’s sediment and crust to study the Earth’s geologic record. In January 2015, he embarked on a new adventure, in Washington, D.C., as director of the Ocean Sciences Division of the National Science Foundation (NSF). He will oversee an annual budget of approximately $350 million for support of ocean sciences research and education. (He will not participate in any oversight of BU funding.) Murray, who was appointed to the position in summer 2014, says there is the potential for him to serve as director for as long as four years, during which time he will be “on loan” from the University to NSF. He replaces former director Deborah Bronk.

Bostonia sat down with Murray at the end of December 2014 to talk about his expectations for the job, the state of the ocean, and how scientists can better serve the public.

Bostonia: I’d like to first welcome you home from sea. What was your most recent research expedition like?

Murray: From late October to early December 2014, I had the privilege to be chief scientist on what happened to be the last research trip of the R/V Knorr, operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. We journeyed to the southern portion of the North Atlantic, about a third of the way between the Caribbean and Africa, and back again to Woods Hole. We took marine sediment samples in many different locations. In addition to working on our climate research, the cruise was particularly interesting because the Knorr is the ship that found the Titanic, discovered hot deep sea vents with the fabulous tubeworms, and so on. It was neat to be on the Knorr for her last trip, let alone to be chief scientist.

Your recent trip sounds like a good sendoff for you to begin at the NSF.

Indeed it is. I won’t be going to sea for any long trips while working with the NSF. For most of my adult life, I’ve gone to sea every year or year and a half, often for up to two months at a time, and I will desperately miss that while at the NSF. But, everything has its time and place, and I’m tremendously excited about the NSF opportunity. There are such good people there. Basically, my team and I are going to be responsible for everything having to do with ocean science research and education. There are several dozen research vessels supported in part by the NSF, in addition to submersibles, remotely operated vehicles, autonomous vehicles, oceanographic and meteorologic buoys, and so on. This also includes oversight of the International Ocean Discovery Program and the Ocean Observatories Initiative, both of which are large international consortia in which the United States plays a leading role.

My position involves helping set priorities for scientific research directions, as well as working with my colleagues toward making very difficult decisions about where to invest our resources on the national and international scale. Virtually all the programs I mentioned are expensive and this is a particularly challenging funding environment, with the national budget as well as science itself being increasingly questioned.

What are some things you want to focus on?

One thing being discussed by the community as well as the NSF is the role of the Arctic. The US has made some significant investments there already, but we hope to do more. With decreasing ice cover, more and more of the Arctic is able to be explored. We can get in there. It’s a huge international strategic interest and there are an increasing amount of potential resources up there—oil and natural gas, general exploration, fisheries, basically anything and everything. Most important, from the basic science point of view, the role of the Arctic and climate is very, very critical. For example, water passing between the North Atlantic and the Arctic has a lot to do with global oceanic circulation, which is responsible for distributing heat over the surface of our planet. There is the potential for us to really make big inroads in our understanding of the Earth’s climate by focusing on the Arctic—but not to exclusion of other areas, of course.

So, how are the oceans doing, anyway?

It’s very dismal. If you took an old mariner from 300 years ago and plopped him in today’s ocean, he would be amazed at how dead our ocean is. The fish are gone. It’s dramatically polluted, even far out at sea. Its boundaries are increasingly threatened. If you look at what’s going on in wetlands, marshes, the edges of rivers—the oceans are essentially under siege. Thirty percent of the planet is the solid earth that we live on. We humans live and raise our families on that small fraction. Things going on in the ocean environmentally are out of sight, out of mind. The ocean has been dramatically abused. It can recover. It’s taken hundreds of years to harm, so it will take a long time to recover. But it can be done.

What about global warming and the ocean?

Right now, there are two global warming problems. One is the continental ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica melting and temperatures rising that we’re familiar with. The other thing is ocean acidification. We’re pumping all this carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Some of that carbon dioxide gets taken up by the ocean, both physically and biologically. It’s essentially acidifying the ocean. That is really starting to affect plankton life—and certainly shellfish in key areas—and perhaps coral reefs. We have no idea how this will all move up the food chain to us.

What about that big 10-year survey of ocean sciences that the National Academy of Sciences has been working on?

A panel of 15 to 20 leading oceanographers in the US is putting together a report based on feedback from the oceanographic community about where ocean studies should go over the next decade. It will address the infrastructure of how we do science—ships, observatories, databases, things like that—as well as scientific priorities. This report is going to land on my desk in roughly mid-January. I don’t know what it’s going to say, nor did my predecessor, which is the way it should be. The independence is a good thing. I’m sure there’s going to be some great stuff in there. A big part of my job, right out of the chute, will be to work with that report and figure a path forward.  And the current funding climate is not exactly great for scientific research…

It’s very difficult. The amount of money being invested is not keeping up with the growing need. The ocean is arguably getting more and more important to everything we do—think about fisheries, coastal erosion from storms, climate, mineral management, coastal wind farms, basic science to help us understand more about two thirds of the planet. But the amount of money coming in has not been enough to keep up with all these challenges and we’re losing ground.

That sounds very discouraging…

Yes, but on the other hand, I’m always a glass-half-full kind of guy. We  want to be able to do something good and we’re going to. My late father would often say, ‘Difficulties are opportunities,’ which, along with ‘Never waste a crisis,’ is a pretty useful phrase.

Speaking of your father, Joseph Murray, he was an extraordinary person—a physician who performed the first successful human organ transplant, a pioneer in reconstructive plastic surgery, and he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1990. Did you ever think of becoming a physician and following in his footsteps?

Well, my father was a great guy first and foremost. He was committed to making the world a better place, and he was also obviously an accomplished “surgeon-scientist,” as he liked to call himself. Actually, no, neither he nor my mother, who trained in music, put any pressure on any of us children to follow in anybody’s footsteps, let alone their’s. And I’ve never been attracted to the medical field beyond the intellectual curiosity of how the human body works. Like my mom, though, I did marry a doctor. My wife, Sara Nuciforo (MED’89), practices internal medicine at South Shore Medical Center in Norwell. She’s a BU person, as well—she graduated from BU School of Medicine in 1989 and did her internship and residency at Boston Medical Center and practiced there for many years after that.

How has being an elected town selectman in Scituate for eight years prepared you for Washington?

Being selectman was the hardest darn job in some ways—you go to the grocery store, people get right in your face about things. As is their right, they’ll ask about schools, the dump, or whatever. The whole gamut. I enjoyed being able to answer questions anytime and anywhere, although there were times it would be nice to just be able to get a gallon of milk and be done with it. When I first ran for selectman, I was really worried it would detract from my scientific career, given the very high workload, even in a little town like Scituate.

You spend a lot of time in meetings, dealing with things like sewer treatment, water systems, conservation, boating issues, schools, and so on. But it’s made me a much better person—I interacted with some very smart and savvy people, and developed some skills at how to get things done. Being a selectman was also very rewarding—perhaps the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. Now that I’ve resigned from the position, I’ve discovered that I don’t miss being expected to do something, but I definitely miss being able to do something.

People in town really rely on selectmen, just as they do other elected or appointed positions. People are busy with their lives, and entrust you with, well, “the public trust,” and you darn well better be true to this. Sadly, I also learned that there are a few people out there who do wake up in the morning trying to figure out a way to game the system or somehow feather their own nest, and you need to have the gumption to stand up to that. It’s a lot like academia in many ways, come to think of it.

You’ve talked a lot about the importance of scientists communicating with the public. Why is this important to you?

Well, let’s start with Scituate, again. As anybody in the Boston area with a TV knows, Scituate gets walloped with coastal nor’easters each winter. We are a town that is culturally, historically, economically, and socially tied to the sea. However, there are a lot of homes that were built or rebuilt in coastally hazardous areas. It’s a real challenge to figure out what to do about this. People get evacuated each year, it seems. Our public safety personnel literally risk their lives getting some of these people out of their homes. There is huge damage done to infrastructure, and overall it is a mess. Insurance companies, sometimes backed by federal guarantees, often inadvertently encourage people to rebuild their homes after they get hammered by a storm.

Where do the scientists come in?

We scientists can do a better job educating people that sea levels are rising, large storms are increasing in frequency, and that things are going to be different in terms of the future. Scientists can do a better job communicating locally, as well as with Congress.  In Massachusetts, our state legislature is remarkably in tune with global warming and the ramifications thereof, but it is unfortunate that the same is often not  true elsewhere.

You were appointed director of Ocean Sciences at the NSF over the summer. What have your colleagues in ocean sciences been saying about the job?

For the past few months, everything has been unknown and easy. It’s like a politician—you’re never more popular than when you first get elected. Right now, all my friends in ocean sciences, they’re like, ‘This is really cool, maybe he’s going to do this, maybe he’s going to do that.’ And then when I and my colleagues at the NSF start making decisions—a decision never pleases everybody. That’s part of why I’m very pleased BU is allowing me to do this on a temporary basis.

Will you miss teaching or being on the BU campus?

To be candid, taking a break from the classroom will be welcome, and I anticipate that when I come back to campus, I will be much more “fresh” in that regard. I still have two PhD students with whom I’m working very closely, along with a former PhD student who just graduated, and I will be meeting with them weekly, in person and electronically. Because my position at the NSF is temporary, I’m expected to still do research, and indeed, the NSF gives me time to do so. That aspect of things will still move along. So, while I’ll miss certain aspects of Comm Ave, I’m still planning on being active with things at BU as well.