[Coral-List] Passing of Peter Gayle

[Jeremy Jackson]

Dear Bill

Peter Gayle was a truly lovely human being who did so much for coral reef
science and conservation in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean. Always
helpful, he was also the welcoming spirit at Discovery Bay and whatever one
needed to do he would help make it happen.

A great, great loss.

Jeremy

On Wed, Apr 22, 2020 at 12:34 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
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-- 
Jeremy Jackson
Author: *Breakpoint: Reckoning with America's Environmental Crises
<https://www.amazon.com/Breakpoint-Reckoning-Americas-Environmental-Crises/dp/0300179391/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1523815680&sr=8-1&keywords=jackson+breakpoint>*