Here is part 1 of the text of a presentation Amy gave at the National Federation of the Blind Annual Convention in Orlando, Florida (#NFB24) on July 6, 2024
These are words you never want to hear on a ship at sea: “Attention, all personnel. Return to your staterooms immediately and lock all doors and passageways. There is a hostile vessel circling the ship”.
No textbook, no classroom, nor any advanced degree can prepare you for a pirate attack on the high seas. But this is exactly what I experienced in 2001, as an oceanographer on an unarmed research ship in the Indian Ocean. Before I tell you how this all turned out, let me rewind a few decades.
Growing up in a small coastal community north of Boston Massachusetts, I fell in love with the ocean. An insatiable curiosity had me turning over every rock at low tide to see what was hiding underneath. And wondering what lay beneath the waves. I was also curious in the classroom. I took nearly all the science and math classes offered at my small high school and found physics to be the most intriguing. So that’s what I chose for my college major. But I quickly realized that most physicists focus on the invisible particles inside atoms. I was more interested in the physical environment we all experience every day: wind and weather, ocean waves and tides, and how it all fits together to shape our planet.
Exactly how I would turn my interest in these topics into a career was uncertain, until I signed up for an off-campus college program called Sea Semester. It appealed to my adventurous spirit, sailing for 6 weeks offshore on a tall ship and learning everything about the oceans: science, history, literature and policy. There I discovered a field of science called physical oceanography: the study of the physical forces that drive motion in the ocean. Now I knew how I could combine my training in math and physics with my passion for understanding how our planet works. After all, to be good stewards of our one and only home, we need to understand what natural forces make our life aboard this celestial ship possible.
To be a physical oceanographer, I went off to graduate school for a PhD. Starting in my very first year, I was involved in research expeditions to the Gulf Stream, where I learned to use sophisticated instruments to study the three-dimensional anatomy of this massive current. I loved it. The adventure, the sense of exploration, the camaraderie that develops during remote field work like this. I was hooked.
The frequent storms I rode out with my shipmates at sea in those early graduate school years didn’t prepare me for what happened next.
At a routine eye exam during my third year of grad school, an abnormal blind spot was discovered. Shortly after that, I was diagnosed with macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa. Accompanying this totally unexpected diagnosis was the demoralizing advice from the ophthalmologist to change careers and consider science administration instead of research. At that time, I hadn’t heard of any scientist anywhere in any field that was blind or had low vision. In fact, I didn’t personally know anyone who was blind or had low vision. I wanted to be an oceanographer and go to sea and do research on ocean currents. Could I still do that? I was no longer sure. The uncertainty in the prognosis was as unsettling as the diagnosis itself: I was informed I would likely become fully or partially blind over some unknown number of years.
Since I’m standing here as a blind physical oceanographer with 35+years of research experience behind me, you know that I didn’t take that doctor’s advice.
Instead, I signed up to see a low-vision specialist with a positive can-do attitude. He was a sailor and understood the excitement of living and working on the ocean. He introduced me to various access technologies. I started believing that maybe I could continue graduate studies in my chosen career. And indeed, I finished my PhD, then started my professional career as a physical oceanographer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, or WHOI, as we call it for short, on Cape Cod in Massachusetts.
