 He transferred off "Pathfinder" in 1960 and attended the University of Washington for a year, completing a course in oceanography and making a research trip aboard the university's research ship "Brown Bear" that took him as far north as the Arctic Ocean off Point Barrow, Alaska.After completing the course, he reported aboard the ocean survey ship USC&GS "Pioneer" (OSS 31) to serve as her assistant operations officer and later her operations officer as she operated in the North Pacific Ocean, conducting surveys that kept her almost constantly underway between Hawaii and Alaska for 30-day stretches of time.