In 1980 , Davis graduated with a Doctoral Degree in Physiology and immediately departed for Antarctica where he , his wife Ana Maria , and two colleagues spent a year ( including the austral winter ) in a remote field camp at White Island studying the diving behavior of Weddell seals . For his effort , Davis received an Antarctica Service Medal with Winter Ribbon and a U.S. Geological Service Antarctic Site Designation 18773 ( Davis Bluff ; 79 ° 09 ’ S , 167 ° 35 ’ E ) on White Island and was inducted into the Explorers Club . Upon returning to Scripps , he received a National Institutes of Health Post-Doctoral Fellowship where he continued his research on harbor seal metabolism during submerged swimming In 1983 , he became a Research Scientist at the Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute in San Diego under the direction of Dr. William Evans . While at Hubbs , Davis and his colleagues studied the thermoregulatory effects of oil on sea otters and developed methods to mitigate the harmful impacts . In March 1989 , he was asked by the U.S. Department of the Interior to direct an Oiled Sea Otter Rehabilitation Program following the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound , Alaska . This program rehabilitated 225 oiled sea otters and became the basis for a book that Davis co-authored on methods for rehabilitating oiled sea otters and other fur-bearing mammals
Exxon Valdez oil spill
Exxon Valdez oil spill
Randall William Davis