In Memoriam: John Robinson

John Robinson, a national figure in U.S. space and ocean programs, is at the heart and soul of Heal the Ocean, and will always be. 

Following a distinguished career with NASA (he was part of Mission Control during the Apollo 11 moon landing). From there, he moved to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), where he established an intergovernmental program called the Outer Continental Shelf Environmental Assessment Program (OCSEAP) in response to the Arab Oil embargo that rocked the world in 1973 following the Yom Kippur War

In 1999 he was introduced to Heal the Ocean co-founder Hillary Hauser by the celebrated ocean explorer Sylvia Earle, and with his characteristic Can-Do spirit, he immediately applied his brilliant engineering mind to solving Santa Barbara ocean pollution problems. He developed for Santa Barbara County a GIS company (GeoDigitalMapping) and created the first septic system maps ever made in California to identify septic “clusters” that needed to clean up by hooking into sewer. His protégé, UCSB graduate Eric Just, says he learned everything he knows from John, and is today a GIS mapper for the City of Santa Barbara.

For Abtech, an Arizona-based company, John developed the stormwater filters to remove pollutants and contaminants from storm drains, and with Heal the Ocean worked to set up an experimental “Adopt-a-Drain” program.

In 1975, John headed the first US governmental response to the international Amoco Cadiz oil spill off France and was subsequently named as the Chief of NOAA’s Hazardous Materials Response Program (HAZMAT).

During his long and successful career with NOAA, John was appointed as the government’s chief scientist for the response to the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska (1989), and the Kuwait oil fires and oil spills in 1991. A year later, in 1992, he organized a 100-day research cruise to the Persian Gulf, aboard the 240 ft. NOAA research vessel Mt. Mitchell in which scientists from Europe, the United States and every Gulf country but Iraq, including Iran to examine the impact of the world’s largest oil spill on this sensitive marine environment. Following this historic research cruise, John led a series of environmental peace talks with scientists from Israeli, Palestine and several Middle Eastern countries, focused on simulated oil spill response meetings in Santa Barbara and Monterey. 

For his actions in the Persian Gulf War, the U.S. Department of Commerce awarded John its Gold Medal, the highest award given by this agency.

One of John’s important legacies to the world is his creation of the Computer Aided Management Engineer Operation (“CAMEO”) program, now in use all over the world on fire trucks. CAMEO allows first responders to compute wind speed and direction together with chemical weight of hazardous material spilled, to immediately calculate the area needing evacuation.

The critical importance of the CAMEO program became horrifically apparent during the 9/11 disaster, when crucial hazmat information was relayed to a commanding post offsite, allowing commanding chiefs to process the information and relay instructions to fire personnel working on site in the disaster area.

In between this heavy schedule of work, John always found time for projects that interested him. He headed the team of scientists and marine workers who led Humphrey the Whale out of San Francisco Bay twice, in 1985 and 1990, when Humphrey strayed into the Bay and up into the Sacramento Delta. 

John’s many interests included classical music, and with HTO co-founder Hillary Hauser, he established Tavros Records in Santa Barbara, to produce recordings of Rachmaninoff and Chopin that earned high international acclaim in the Penguin Guide to Classical Recordings.

John was working on ARES (Advanced Rail Energy Storage) a program for renewable energy storage just before he passed away in 2011 from complications related to brain cancer. When he left us, John took part of our hearts with him. There was no one – no one – like John Robinson. Heal the Ocean is proud to have him in our permanent history