Fisher served as ship scheduler at Scripps from 1964-1968 and SIO associate director, Ship Operations and Marine Technical Support, from 1974-1980. He planned and led many complex deep-sea expeditions at Scripps and in cooperation with other academic institutions and international agencies throughout the Pacific, Indian, and western Arctic Oceans. He directed Scripps programs for the International Indian Ocean Expedition (IIOE) from 1960-1965, and he chaired the U.S. IIOE Geology-Geophysics Committee and co-chaired its multinational geology-geophysics counterpart.

Fisher served from 1976-1993 on the guiding committee for the IOC-IHO General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO) in Monaco and chaired its Subcommittee on Undersea Feature Names from 1982-2003. He was elected to fellowship in 1988 and in 2002 named an honorary member of the Explorer’s Club, joining the likes of John Glenn and Chuck Yeager. In 1999 he was made an honorary Foreign Fellow of the British Challenger Society for Marine Sciences. In 2004, he was awarded the Drake Medal by GEBCO. The award, a replica of the medal given to Sir Francis Drake in 1589 by England’s Queen Elizabeth I, was specifically designed for Fisher to honor his major contributions to the scientific knowledge of seafloor trenches as well as the crustal structure, composition, and topography underlying the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

The interview stressed Fisher’s half-century of work as a Scripps research geologist, including his role as initiator, planner and chief scientist on many expeditions throughout the world. We also discussed subjects as diverse as the philosophy of going to sea and the individuality involved in bathymetric charting, to the naming of underwater features and his views on how changes in society and technology impacted field research at Scripps since 1950.