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- Home>Harvard>People>Non-Paleo
- Myvanway Millan Dick, Icthyologist
- Myvanwy was also a prominent member of the MCZ paleo staff that I got to know personally. I’ll show you a few of her publications and then tell you a funny story that involves her and her long gray-yellow hair. For the record, her name is Welch, hence the unusual spelling. Here are several publications from a HOLLIS search:
- “Louis Agassiz’s numbers for steamer Blake stations of 1877-78, 1878-79"
“Bathyclupea schroederi, a new bathyclupeid fish from the western tropical Atlantic,” 1962
“Stations of the Thayer Expedition to Brazil, 1865-1866.” 1977
- The funny story took place during a beach party-clam bake put on by Dr. Romer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the Petroleum Organic Geochemistry Group and the Marine Biological Laboratory, just below Nobska Point Light House. A fairly large contingent of staff and their families went down to Wood’s Hole for this shin-dig. Anticipating some fun and good grub. They weren’t disappointed on either count. Dad provided some of the fun.
When this happened, lots of people were swimming and skin diving. Woods Hole has lots of crabs, worms, stars, kelp, seaweed, etc. so a bunch of scientific types are going to naturally spend considerable time pulling stuff up and examining it. One group waded around in their swim wear, talking to each other about their finds while another contingent sat dry on the sand chatting and observing the going’s on.
Dad decided to play a trick on people, not realizing quite what he was doing. He rooted around in the waist-deep water, immersing himself while he hunted for some large clumps of the dirty yellow seaweed that has skinny stems with small air pockets. While he was under the water, he mounted a large clump of this stuff on the top of his head. When he stood up, he had his back to the beach, just horsing around.
The observers, who were a hundred yards away saw him come up, and initially didn’t think much about it. Then someone realized that this was Myvanway - without the top of her swimming suit. People were shocked and tried to figure how to rescue Myvanway, obviously in need of being rescued because she didn’t act like she even realized her predicament. She just stood there, exposed, facing the ocean. Dad heard the noise and turned around to see what the racket was about. As he turned, the audience saw his large rose tattoo on his right upper arm and then his face. He didn’t realize what he had done, but I am sure that he would have done the same thing if he had thought about it that way.
One summer dad worked out a deal with Myvanway wherein we were hired to do a Census of the fish stored in her department. HERE is a story with some photos of bizarre fishes.
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