LEGACY SOCIETY MEMBER SPOTLIGHT:
Rossiters’ Estate-Plan Gift to Fund CCS’s Future

Retired commercial airline pilot Bill Rossiter still remembers his first whale watch. It was 1979, and Stormy Mayo was the naturalist on board the Dolphin Whale Watch; and together they saw their first North Atlantic right whale.

Both the Center for Coastal Studies and the Dolphin Fleet were in their early years—the Center’s young whale researchers speaking to passengers and conducting research from on board. They learned to identify humpback whales by the unique black-and-white patterns found on their tails and to give whales names to help with future identification.

In those days, Bill and his wife Mia frequently explored the Cape’s waters from their Zodiac inflatable boat. He says it occurred to him that an inflatable boat would give the Center’s researchers a craft that was easy to launch and flexible to schedule. “A boat rep at the New York boat show got excited and provided us with a small Zodiac. We had a used 15-horsepower motor. Stormy and a couple of the others and I inflated the boat on Race Point Beach, and we puttered a mile or two off-shore. We came on an enormous aggregation of whales, humpbacks, minkes, birds—the noise was astonishing.”

Bill and Mia’s relationship with the Center grew over time. After the Center’s first successful disentanglement of a humpback whale called “Ibis” in 1984, Bill started thinking about equipment—specifically a knife that could quickly slice through rope without damaging either a hand or the inflatable boat.

He used his aviation industry network to find a solution. “I got hold of a civilian at an Air Force base in charge of survival gear,” he remembers. “When you’re on the ground and you can’t get out of your parachute, a parachute knife is way to cut it. He donated 25 little parachute knives with hooks to the Center.” Those early knives became the prototype for the custom-made tools the Center now uses and provides to disentanglement teams around the world.

Bill served on the Center’s Board of Directors for many years, and he and Mia have devoted themselves to environmental protection in many ways. One of their passions is to further the careers and work of promising young scientists, in particular those around the world with limited resources. Their generosity has funded professional development for graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and others early in their careers.

Bill and Mia have been Center supporters for more than 40 years. They have included the Center in their estate planning. “We see supporting the Center as an investment in the future,” says Bill. “I’m always impressed with the quality of the people at the Center. They are scientists who have a philosophy of not only understanding but finding rational solutions to environmental problems.”