[Coral-List] Passing of Peter Gayle

[Phillip Dustan]

Dear Listers,
I'd like to echo BIll Precht's sentiments about Peter Gayle.
I never got to dive with him but enjoyed his welcoming company, and
critical thinkin.,
We also shared a love for new gadgets - cameras, tools, or just fun things
as well the Discovery Bay Marine Lab.
Unknown to many of us, Peter posessed a wonderful baritone voice which he
exercised as a member of his church.
We will all miss him.
  Phil

On Wed, Apr 22, 2020 at 12:33 PM William Precht via Coral-List <
coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:

> To all.
>
> With deep sorrow I wanted to inform the coral reef and scientific dive
> community of the passing of Peter Gayle from Discovery Bay Marine
> Laboratory.
>
> Peter was a dear friend of mine. I first met Peter at Discovery Bay in the
> mid-1980s and we have been friends ever since.
>
> We took a tri-mix tech diving course together, we did a bunch of dives off
> the north coast of Jamaica to depths I shouldn’t talk about - when he was
> working on his graduate thesis at UWI, and he got me to play on a local
> cricket team in St Anne’s Parrish when I was in town.
>
> Over the past decade or so he got actively engaged in coral restoration and
> relocation projects and would constantly pick my brain to learn all that he
> could about the subject.  We stayed close via email over the last few
> years. The last time I saw him was at the Coral Reef Futures meeting in Key
> Largo in December 2018. Although his health was not great and he was
> confined to a wheelchair at the meeting he still had a very positive
> outlook towards the future.
>
> I have enclosed below the text from a UWI press release that I received
> from a friend this week.
> ———————————
>
> The University of the West Indies, Mona, regrets to inform you that one of
> our colleagues, Mr Peter Hope Marshal Gayle, passed away on Friday April
> 17, 2020.
>
>
>
> Mr. Gayle was employed as the Principal Scientific Officer at the
> UWI’s Discovery
> Bay Marine Laboratory (DBML), having assumed responsibilities there in
> 1985.
> In addition to overseeing scientific operations, Peter ran the DBML’s SCUBA
> diving programme, operated and maintained the lab’s ageing “Perry”
> Recompression Chamber and oversaw the treatment of more than 380 dive
> accident patients between 1985 to 2012 and led the effort to install and
> commission the new HYTECH Hyperbaric Chamber which was opened in 2013.  He
> was the UWI’s representative on the Board of the Association of the Marine
> Laboratories of the Caribbean (AMLC) for over 15 years.
>
>
>
> Peter served with the Jamaica Defence Force National Reserve in the Coast
> Guard for 20 years where he achieved the rank of Lieutenant (senior grade).
> In his spare time he sang bass with the St. Ann’s Bay Singers and as a
> soloist.
>
>
> ————-
>
>
> Respectfully
>
>
> Bill Precht
>
>
>
> --
> William F. Precht
>
>  “You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice
> you have”
>
> Bob Marley
> _______________________________________________
> Coral-List mailing list
> Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
> https://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list



-- 



Phillip Dustan PhD
Charleston SC  29424
843-953-8086 office
843-224-3321 (mobile)

"When we try to pick out anything by itself
we find that it is bound fast by a thousand invisible cords
that cannot be broken, to everything in the universe. "
*                                         John Muir 1869*

*Raja Ampat Sustainability Project video*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RR2SazW_VY&fbclid=IwAR09oZkEk8wQkK6LN3XzVGPgAWSujACyUfe2Ist__nYxRRSkDE_jAYqkJ7A
*Bali Coral Bleaching 2016 video*

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxOfLTnPSUo
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxOfLTnPSUo>*
TEDx Charleston on saving coral reefs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwENBNrfKj4
Google Scholar Citations:
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=HCwfXZ0AAAAJ