Janet Grieve

40 years ago last April Janet employed me to work as a fellow biological oceanographer at the NZ Oceanographic Institute, and I very much owe my science career to Janet, not only because she employed me but because of all sage advice and support she provided me over the years.

Janet’s key area of ocean science interest and expertise was plankton. She studied ocean productivity, which is driven by the single celled plant plankton or phytoplankton found in the surface layers of the ocean and the base of ocean food webs, similar to the grass in a paddock. She also researched the animals in the plankton or zooplankton, that eat the phytoplankton, the equivalent of the cows in the paddock. The zooplankton in turn are food for larger animals such as fish, whales and seabirds.

Janet was especially interested in one group of zooplankton, called copepods which means ‘oar feet’, animals related to shrimps and crabs, often referred to as water fleas. They average only 1-3 mm in length, and to study them required Janet to spend thousands of hours looking down a microscope.  There are over 10,000 different species in the global ocean, and many believe that copepods are more abundant than any other animal group on the planet.  

Janet first studied plankton for her PhD thesis under the supervision Prof George Knox at the University of Canterbury. She worked at the Edward Percival Marine Laboratory in Kaikoura researching the annual cycle of plankton off the local coast. After successfully completing her thesis, she started work in 1966 as a scientist for the New Zealand Oceanographic Institute, DSIR, here in Wellington, where she published her thesis work in an Institute Memoir. Janet worked her entire career at the NZ Oceanographic Institute, which became part of NIWA in 1992. She retired from NIWA in 2004 but continued to come into the office until relatively recently as an emeritus scientist.

She was a global authority and became widely recognised as the world’s leading expert on copepod taxonomy.  Over her career she named and described over 80 new species and had at least five species named after her.   She collaborated with scientists in countries all around the world, was a visiting scholar at the famous Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC from 1971-73, and yes there is such a thing as the World Association of Copepodologists, and she was its president from 2008-2011.

Janet’s research extended beyond copepods into other areas of marine science.  She was the first New Zealander to measure the growth rates of plant plankton in our ocean waters and established and led the first major multidisciplinary oceanographic research programme studying the ocean off Westland. She played a key role in environmental assessments for the Maui gas field development in the Taranaki Bight, one of NZs first marine projects to include environmental management. She participated in a 1977 expedition to Antarctica that successfully drilled through the 420m thick Ross Ice Shelf, enabling her to collect and study the first samples to be collected from within the ocean cavity below an ice shelf, recording living marine organisms 450km from where the ice shelf edge meets the open ocean. Janet also undertook research in relation to fisheries, and in 1991-92 was a member of the Task Force that reviewed New Zealand’s fisheries legislation.

Janet was incredibly dedicated, worked long hours and was highly productive. Over her career she produced over 100 publications, some of them major works hundreds of pages in length. She also gave numerous conference and public presentations, and authored contract reports and popular articles.

Janet was very active in science advocacy, management and governance. This included being a Board member for the Cawthron Institute, member of the Wellington Polytechnic Council, member of the NZ UNESCO Science Sub-committee, Council member of the Royal Society of New Zealand, and a member of a Foundation for Research, Science and Technology funding committee. Janet held the positions of Treasurer, Secretary and vice-President for the New Zealand Marine Sciences Society, making her the longest standing council member in its history, and was President and Treasurer of the NZ Association of Scientists.

From the moment Janet was employed at the Oceanographic Institute she became a trailblazer for women in science. She was the first woman to lead a research voyage at the Oceanographic Institute in 1967 and would go on to lead and participate in many more. From 1989 to 1991 Janet was also the only woman to become the Manager of the NZ Oceanographic Institute.

In 1985 Janet wrote a paper for and helped organise a Symposium on Women and Employment in Science and Technology. Her paper concluded that there was urgent need for effective intervention programmes if the missing half of the country’s brainpower and talent was to be harnessed. Following the Symposium she was a key player in the establishment of the Association of Women in Science in New Zealand, and the inaugural meeting of the Association was held at Janet’s home in 1986. It is now a large active organisation with a national executive team and regional convenors, organising a range of activities, such as advocacy and awards to support women in science. Around the same time Janet also helped to establish a group to support teachers, both men and women, wanting to promote the involvement of women and girls in science. To have helped establish these initiatives 40 years ago required courage and determination. She believed in equity and was not afraid to stand up for what she considered the right thing to do.

Needless to say, it is not surprising that Janet was the recipient of numerous awards and honours. These included the New Zealand 1990 Commemoration Medal (celebrating 150 years of the Treaty of Waitangi and awarded to 3,600 New Zealanders, Janet was one of the notable recipients), the NZ Marine Sciences Award and in 1995 she became a life member of the NZ Association of Scientists. She was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 2003 and became an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to marine science in 2007.

While Janet will be sadly missed as a colleague, mentor, and friend, she was a true pioneer and will not be forgotten, she is already in our history books. 

Obituary by Rob Murdoch, NIWA: Earth Sciences New Zealand