Changing Climate

Masterdiver in his Field

“Bill has published over 375 technical reports and a couple of books about corals, coral reefs and other marine habitats,” said Dan Savercool ’84, a zoology major and a manager of water and natural resources at EA Engineering, Science and Technology, Inc. “That is a phenomenal everlasting legacy that is available to scientists, decision makers and the interested public—and will be for many, many years.”

Precht is featured in National Geographic’s four-part television series, Strange Days on Planet Earth, narrated by Hollywood actor Edward Norton, and in the Emmy award-winning New Mexico PBS documentary, Desert Reef. He authored two books, including the seminal Coral Reef Restoration Handbook—The Rehabilitation of an Ecosystem under Siege (CRC Press, 2006).

Perhaps it was the 100 inches of snow that fell in Oswego in January 1978 that solidified his memory, but William Precht ’79 can clearly recall when his life changed forever.

He was sitting in a sand patch on the coral reef at Jamaica’s Discovery Bay Marine Lab waiting to complete a check-out dive with his classmates. They had to show their scuba skills were adequate to do the open water diving, so they could gather research on the coral reefs for their SUNY Oswego coursework.

“I was just looking at the coral reef around me,” he said. “I never had this feeling before. It was just awe-inspiring. I got back to the boat to where Professor Dave Thomas was, and I looked at him and I said, ’How can I do this the rest of my life?’”

That 1978 spring break trip set him on course to become one of the leading researchers on coral reefs, seagrasses and mangrove ecosystems in the world today.

Diving In

Prof. Thomas laid out the academic path Precht would need to follow to achieve this new goal, and Precht went all in. (See related story on Geology Prof. Dave Thomas on back cover.)

Precht admitted that until that point, he had never fully applied himself to academic studies. But after that conversation on the boat with Prof. Thomas, he became laser-focused on performing well in his remaining classes.

Precht also earned the respect of Thomas and other professors who wrote him letters of recommendation to get into graduate school—an option he never envisioned for his future prior to that trip abroad.

Precht went on to earn a master’s degree in earth science from Adelphi University, a certificate in carbonate sedimentology from the Colorado School of Mines and graduate credits in coral reefs and geology from the University of Northern Colorado, and he completed all but his dissertation in the doctoral program at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Science.

Since graduating from the University of Miami, Precht has spent the past 30 years in the Miami, Fla., area working on everything from environmental impact statements to monitoring coastal marine ecosystems to see how they change over time. A certified PADI Open Water SCUBA diver since 1974, he has logged more than 5,000 scientific dives, with 4,750 dives on coral reefs and associated ecosystems.

“He’s world-class on a lot of levels,” said long-time research partner and friend Richard B. Aronson, Ph.D., professor and head of the Department of Ocean Engineering and Marine Sciences at the Florida Institute of Technology. “He has encyclopedic knowledge on the science of coral reefs and instant recall of the literature.”

The pair had both been studying the coral reefs at Discovery Bay Marine Lab since the late 1970s and met there in 1987 when Precht was conducting research as a graduate student at the University of Miami and Aronson, a young professor at Northeastern University, was leading a group of students in field study.

Precht, a geologist by training, asked to tag along to visit an ancient coral reef that he had studied with Prof. Thomas during their trip to Jamaica nine years earlier.

“I agreed, but, in exchange, he had to do a little talk about the reef to my students,” Aronson said. “Well, I quickly discovered how animated and engaging he is as a teacher.”

That interaction led to Precht becoming an adjunct professor in Northeastern University’s Three Seas - East/West Marine Biology Program, where he has taught a course in coral reef ecology for 33 years.

“He is a brilliant instructor,” Aronson said. “He’s very good with the students. He’s sociable, outgoing, extraordinarily kind and a mentor to his students. They adore him. He’s just a really great guy.”