Jerry Schubel received his Ph.D. in Oceanography from Johns Hopkins University and an honorary doctorate from the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. He went on to serve as associate director of the Johns Hopkins Chesapeake Bay Institute and from 1974-1994 served as the dean of Stony Brook University's Marine Science Research Center. He is the President and CEO of the Aquarium of the Pacific. He has written extensively on science-management policy for ocean issues and sits on several boards, including National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Science Advisory Board, the Science Advisory Panel for California's Ocean Protection Council, and the Board of Governors of the Savannah Ocean Exchange. In this oral history, he discusses the Chesapeake Bay Institute and his career in oceanography. This oral history is part of the Hopkins Retrospective oral histories series.

This program, hosted by Leo Geier, takes place aboard the "Maury", a laboratory ship belonging to the Johns Hopkins' Chesapeake Bay Institute. Assistant director Dayton Carritt explains that the Institute was founded in 1948 to study the physical and chemical oceanography of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries and to conduct the academic program in oceanography at Johns Hopkins University. The Bay is 200 miles long, 20 miles wide, and a great natural resource for commercial and recreational users. Dr. Donald Pritchard, director of the Institute, shows viewers such below deck equipment as the pyrheliometer, which measures and records the intensity of solar radiation; and thetri-filter hydrophotometer, which measures the amount of red, green, and blue light that penetrates the various depths of the Bay and indicates the amount of energy in the water available for underwater plant growth. Using a schematic illustration, Dr. Carritt describes the environmental factors affecting plants and organisms in the Bay, such as water currents, temperature, and salinity as well as availability of plant food, oxygen, and animal life. Dick Whaley demonstrates a microscope mounted with a camera to study and record species of organisms such as diatoms. Other instruments read the salinity and temperature of the water, measure the angle of the current, and analyze the amount of dissolved oxygen in water for plant use. Scuba divers Tom Hopkins and Jim Carpenter discuss their apparatus and their Bell and Howell movie camera with underwater lens before going overboard to study the oyster and clam beds for predators and general condition. These are all examples of pure research on the Chesapeake Bay.