A UC San Diego scientist who has spent her life demystifying the deep, dark and often dangerous waters of the world’s oceans will receive the Prince Albert I Grand Medal for science, one of the highest honors of its kind.
Lisa Levin of UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography is being honored for revealing how changing environmental conditions can affect marine life in deep-sea communities, especially on the margins of the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans.
The biological oceanographer also was selected because of her decades of work promoting deep-sea conservation and observation, and for her studies of wetland ecology.
The award will be presented on Nov. 7 by the Oceanographic Institute of the Prince Albert I of Monaco Foundation. South Korean politician and diplomat Ban Ki-moon also will be honored.
Levin grew up in west Los Angeles and fell in love with the ocean during her frequent trips to the beach at Santa Monica. That love grew deeper during her high school years when she took summer courses in marine biology and oceanography at Humboldt State University.
She did her undergraduate work at Harvard University, then became a graduate student at Scripps Oceanography, where her career as a deep-sea diver began to flourish.
Before long, she undertook her first dives in Alvin, the legendary three-person research submarine that continues to be used throughout the world.
Most deep-sea explorers are lucky if they log a few dives in Alvin. Levin has done more than 50.
“I have the best job in the world,” Levin said. “I get to go to new places at the bottom of the ocean and see things that nobody has ever seen before. You can discover new things on pretty much every dive.
“The other thing I love is that it is very international. We’re always working in different parts of the ocean in different countries and I get to interact with a lot of international scientists and students.
“To me, it is as wonderful and exotic as the animals and ecosystems that we work on.”