In 1967, Ricky Grigg was named the best surfer in the world by Surfing magazine. He approached the waves the same way he approached life: by relying on his instincts and integrity. As his connection to the ocean deepened from riding the waves to studying what lay beneath them, he relied on these skills once more to unravel the mysteries of the ocean and coral reef formation.
Richard "Ricky" Grigg, '58, died on May 21 at his home in Honolulu from complications of pneumonia. He was 77.
Grigg grew up with his mother and sister, Robin, in their Santa Monica, Calif., home. With the beach as his backyard, he took to the water as if it were his playground. He started surfing when he was 9, dividing his time in the sea between riding waves and diving for lobsters he sold on the beach. As he improved at the sport, his talent attracted the attention of surfing greats like Buzzy Trent, who served as his mentor and encouraged him to keep conquering the break.
Grigg headed north to attend Stanford (appealing in part because it was close to the surf breaks in Santa Cruz). After earning a degree in biology, he became one of the first to take on the waves of Oahu's North Shore, where he grew into a surf legend, distinguished by his playful style and for exuberantly thrusting his arms into the air as he rode the colossal waves. He appeared in a slew of surf movies and was a fixture at big-wave competitions, culminating in his win at the 1967 Duke Kahanamoku Invitational at Oahu's Sunset Beach, while finishing a master's degree in zoology at the University of Hawaii.
Grigg continued his studies at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., where he was one of the aquanauts aboard the NASA-sponsored Sealab II, testing the effects on the human body of prolonged exposure to extreme depth. In 1970 he earned his doctorate and soon after joined the faculty at the University of Hawaii, continuing his research on the submerged islands of the Hawaiian-Emperor chain. At its northernmost reaches, he discovered the "Darwin Point," a place where coral colonies thin and the volcanic islands begin to drown.
Hailed as an authority on coral ecology, Grigg won the National Academy of Underwater Arts and Science's Lifetime Achievement Award for underwater research and was inducted into the Hawaii Waterman Hall of Fame. In addition to publishing more than 100 scientific papers, he wrote Big Surf, Deep Dives and the Islands, in which he described his lifelong romance with the sea: "The ocean has always been the medium of my life. It seems almost to course through my veins, perhaps not unlike a distant ancestor who breathed sea water through its gills."
Grigg is survived by his wife, Maria; daughters, Carol Allen, Romy and Raina; stepchildren, Mark Monroe and Juliana Chaize; and three grandsons.
Hannah I.T. Brown is a Stanford intern.
