78 F
Cruz Bay
Friday, March 29, 2024
HomeNewsArchivesOn Island Profile: Roy Watlington

On Island Profile: Roy Watlington

Oct. 26, 2008 — If you've enjoyed the waters most anywhere in the Eastern Caribbean in the last four decades, chances are you've been in waters intimately known to scientist Roy Watlington.
You might not know the turbidity of those waters, the salinity or whether you might be swimming over a submerged volcano. But Watlington would know. He can discuss the effects of plume variability in the ocean as easily as most of us discuss the sun rising in the east. The ocean is a passion of the 26-year University of the Virgin Islands physics professor.
On land, you might find Watlington educating the V.I. Territorial Emergency Management Agency (VITEMA) staff on natural hazards that affect the territory. In 1997, he and researcher Shirley Lincoln co-authored Disaster and Disruption in 1867: Hurricane, Earthquake and Tsunami in the Danish West Indies. He is a recognized expert on tsunamis.
"This is a part of our history people don't even know about," he says.
Or you might find him coaching at a race of the St. Thomas Roadrunners Association, an organization he cofounded in 1985. Watlington was a professional marathoner in the states, with about 30 races under his belt.
Or, in 2003, you might have found him boarding the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel Ronald H. Brown, as excited as the students he is taking on an Anegada Climate Tracers Study (ACTS). Watlington is the principal investigator and driving force behind the study, which examines age-old secrets of the earth's climate, such as La Nina, El Nino or global warming, which are studied through the infinitesimal trace substances gathered in the water samples they retrieve.
Or you might catch him, as the Source did, in a rare quiet moment at his office in the UVI Marine Science Center. It wasn't happenstance, though — for years Watlington has declined an interview: "I'm sorry, but I'm just too busy right now." But this year he is finally retiring from UVI, "to do the research I cannot do while teaching."
Asked what he considers his most defining characteristic, Watlington pauses for only a moment.
"I'm resourceful," he says. "I go into lots of situations which initially I think I can't handle, but eventually I figure them out." He smiles. "I'm not an extreme success in anything I've done, but I've been able to pull some things off."
The list of those "things" is staggering: It includes a 40-year teaching career, here and in the States. He is the co-principal investigator of the Caribbean Regional Association for Integrated Coastal Ocean Observing Systems, and a member of the U.S. delegation to UNESCO. He was an associate professor at the University of the District of Columbia and the Washington Technical Institute. He was, in fact, a tenured professor with 13 years under his belt when he returned home in 1982 to teach at UVI.
Though Watlington is not overly modest, neither is he given to blowing his own horn. (Unless of course, it would be a conch shell he discovered.)
The results of his resourcefulness abound in his tiny office. It is stacked to the ceiling with books, papers, maps, charts, instruments and a preserved freshwater shrimp in a bottle on his desk — nary an unused square inch. And he knows where everything is.
The walls are covered with pictures of family, students and a graph of the Kick 'em Jenny submerged volcano off Grenada.
"We actually generated that," Watlington says, referring to himself and his research team. "Nobody has as good resolution."
As we talk, students interrupt a regular intervals. Alex Dennis wants to know the distance to a certain buoy for a swim meet.
"People tend to think my research is mandated by UVI; it's not," says the tall, lanky 68-year-old. "My work on tsunamis and earthquakes has nothing to do with UVI. My workload is jumbled, that's me.
"I am really interested in the peregrinations of people. I never knew as a child that I had a great uncle Emile who had gone in Africa, to Capetown and raised a family there. One of his daughters is named Charlotte Amalie."
Watlington has always followed his own drummer, whether it led to Boeing Aircraft in Seattle or a thwarted dream of being a pilot.
"They said my legs were too long," he says. "Nobody even knew about the Tuskegee Airmen then."
Returning to the territory in the early 1960s, Watlington, the son of Education Commissioner Mario Watlington, found himself in front of a science class at Charlotte Amalie High School, wondering what to do.
"My father suggested I try teaching, so I went just to be polite," he says. "The principal, Gwendolyn Kean, thought I was there to teach and whisked me into a classroom. So I winged it."
After two years teaching at CAHS, Watlington returned to the States, where he earned advanced degrees at Fisk and Howard universities. He returned to UVI in 1982, where he has taught physics except for three years as chancellor.
The professor looks over his jumble of documents, the accumulation of decades of study and documentation.
"The first thing I'll do is build shelves at home to hold all this," Watlington says. "I want to write and do research now. My father was so active in so many organizations after he retired that he didn't really get to any writing. I don't want that to happen to me."
Watlington recently joined the board of the Rwanda Project, and he will continue with STAR. Pondering the immediate future, he laughs
"It's going to be awfully quiet," he says. "Maybe I'll have to get some students to interrupt me now and then."
Back Talk Share your reaction to this news with other Source readers. Please include headline, your name and city and state/country or island where you reside.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email
Keeping our community informed is our top priority.
If you have a news tip to share, please call or text us at 340-228-8784.

Support local + independent journalism in the U.S. Virgin Islands

Unlike many news organizations, we haven't put up a paywall – we want to keep our journalism as accessible as we can. Our independent journalism costs time, money and hard work to keep you informed, but we do it because we believe that it matters. We know that informed communities are empowered ones. If you appreciate our reporting and want to help make our future more secure, please consider donating.