Mary Sears led a mostly female research team that was crucial to US operations in the Pacific theatre in the 1940s.
Credit: Hulton Archive/GettyWilliam Morrow
Death tolls among the Japanese defenders and Korean labourers were much higher. But the US losses sparked outrage in Congress and among the American public. The outcome at Tarawa led the US military to drastically increase its oceanographic intelligence services. Military leaders did not want to repeat the fatal miscalculation made in the run-up to the invasion of Tarawa, when planners had failed to fully account for the narrow tidal range of a neap tide, which caused the boats to run aground.
Her studies put Sears front and centre when the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution was founded in 1930, with Bigelow as its first director. Sears was one of the institution’s first staff members, working to organize collections of plankton, jellyfish and other marine creatures. She was, of course, confined to the laboratory, because Bigelow did not allow women to conduct research on board WHOI’s brand-new research vessel.
Sears shifted from the snail-like speed of academic publishing to the fast-paced needs of the military. Navy officials came to her just a few months before planned operations, asking for a detailed assessment of potential landing targets to be done immediately. She would often get knocks on her door in the middle of the night and would go to the office to put together tidal tables for yet another small Pacific island.