Associate Professor Mike Lucas
The Antarctic Legacy of South Africa is saddened to report the recent passing of a long-time and well known participant within the South African National Antarctic Programme. Associate Professor Mike Lucas of the University of Cape Town’s Department of Biological Sciences and its Marine Research Institute (Ma-Re) passed away peacefully in his sleep in the early hours of last Saturday morning. Mike Lucas was in his final year at UCT before retiring.
Mike was a member of the international Scientific Committee of Oceanic Research (SCOR) which focuses on promoting international cooperation in planning and conducting oceanographic research. His own research focused on how climate change affects the marine environment, particularly in the Atlantic and Southern Oceans, and how this in turn can affect global climate.
UCT’s Dean of Science, Professor Anton le Roex, himself an erstwhile SANAP scientist, has written: “Mike has been at UCT since the late 1970s and during this time many students at undergraduate and postgraduate level have passed through his very capable hands. He started his formal employment at UCT in 1982 as an “Antarctic Officer” involved in deep water marine research funded by the South African Antarctic [National] Programme, before joining the academic staff of the then Department of Zoology. His love of the sea and all things marine biological are well known, and during his time at UCT he enthused many generations of students in the mysteries of the marine world and more recently the link to climate change. His recent book, co-authored [in 2015] with Mary and Bob Scholes, entitled “Climate Change: Briefings from Southern Africa” is testament to his deep love for the oceans and their interaction with the climate.”
Although a long-time colleague of Mike’s (and a fellow SANAP Antarctic Officer) at the University of Cape Town in the 1980s and 1990s we did not have a great deal of interactions. However, I do remember well sharing with him in a “VIP cabin” on South Africa’s old Antarctic research and supply ship, the r.v. S.A. Agulhas, on a long cruise south in the 1980s. Notable then was Mike’s friendliness and popularity, shown by regular visits to our cabin by student oceanographers. The only publication I co-authored with Mike, perhaps fittingly, must be one of his last scientific papers. We worked earlier this year with many colleagues under the leadership of another of UCT’s oceanographers, Associate Professor Isabelle Ansorge, to produce a commentary on a way forward for SANAP, published in this year’s May/June issue of the South African Journal of Science (click here).
As well as publishing many scholarly papers in biological, polar and oceanographic journals, Mike found time to write and publish in 2006 a book, “Antarctica” illustrated with his own photographs. A German edition followed. Surprisingly, I find I have no copy of this book in my otherwise near-complete collection of popular writings on South Africa’s Antarctic activities. Time, I think, to redress this in Mike’s memory.
As well as Mike, the SANAP community lost another stalwart earlier this year, marine Biologist Dr Norbert Klages (click here). Big shoes both, for the new generation of SANAP scientists to fill.
Read an appreciation of Mike Lucas by Dr Max Price, UCT’s Vice-Chancellor here.
John Cooper, Antarctic Legacy of South Africa, Department of Botany and Zoology, Stellenbosch University, 03 June 2017