Marine biology professor Charles Messing’s bookshelf in his office in the Parker Building doesn’t have any books. It is filled with dinosaurs — from triceratops to diplodocuses.
They are the remnants of his childhood dream of being a paleontologist, working with paleontologists and teaching a course on the age of dinosaurs.
“It got to the point that, when I was about 6-years-old, my friends started calling me ‘Chuckasaurus,’ because I was so interested in them,” Messing said. “In eighth grade, my teachers convinced me that there was no future in dinosaurs and that I should look for something else.”
Going to the Jacques-Yves Cousteau film “The Silent World” with his grandfather created an interest in oceanography. However, his only experience with the ocean was swimming in it, so the world of oceanography was alien to Messing. But he knew he didn’t want to work with insects, plants or microscopic organisms, so he gravitated toward marine biology where he found the diversity of life that fascinated him.
Today, Messing, Ph.D., professor at the Oceanographic Cen-ter and the Farquhar College of Arts and Sciences, continues to enjoy the diversity of life and has discovered new marine species. He received his bachelor’s degree in biological science from Rutgers University and master’s and doctoral degrees in biological oceanography from the University of Miami. He was also a postdoctoral research fellow at the Smithsonian Institution.
Messing’s latest project is a television show called “Messing with Nature.”
During his freshman year in college, one of Messing’s professors used a video to lecture. When he saw his professor on the video, he decided that he wanted to do something similar.
“A number of years ago, I approached our digital media productions facility here in the Office of Information Technology, and I said, ‘How would you like to do this? Here’s a proposal and a treatment for an idea for a show,’” he said.
After the idea was approved, Messing and the team worked for seven years to produce two half-hour episodes. Messing has premiered the show to colleagues and friends and will now try to air them on a local channel.
Messing said his dream for the show is to get a sponsor and have it air on a major cable channel like Animal Planet or National Geographic. But Messing said he knows it will be not easy.
“That’s like saying, ‘Well, I’m a teenager and I do a little disc jockeying, and I’m going to get a record contract.’ It’s as long a shot as that,” he said. “It’s a dream, and I’m working toward the dream. It’s still a minor component of what I do.”
One of those components is Messing’s research. His specialty is the ecology and evolution of crinoids, also called sea lilies and feather stars, which are related to sea stars and urchins. He describes new species of them and studies their growth and distribution. He also studies the ecology of deep sea coral reefs. This research has taken him to Papua New Guinea, the Philippines and the Bahamas. He also had the opportunity to use the Alvin, the submarine that found the Titanic.
Messing also has an artistic side.
He takes voice lessons and sings from the American songbook and Broadway musicals. He said he enjoys singing because he comes from a show business family. His father was a lighting electrician for NBC, his uncle is Bruce Jay Friedman, a screenplay writer and playwright, and his brother is a musicologist.
“It’s in the blood,” he said. “It took me until my 30s to have it really come out.”
As a graduate student, a classmate encouraged him to perform in a skit at a Christmas party.
“I had never done anything onstage,” Messing said. “I was in the theater group at high school, but just backstage. He dragged me kicking and screaming, and I found out I could rewrite lyrics. And so, I’ve been doing that ever since. Marine biologist by day — Weird Al Yankovic by night.”
Messing parodies songs for his friends and family and played Ebenezer Scrooge in “The Voice of Dickens: A Concert of Holiday Carols” in the performance theater in the Don Taft University Center in December.
Messing also drew scientific illustrations for science books, and he illustrates his scientific work.
Messing said he enjoys his hobbies when he can because his duties as a professor leave him with little spare time. But, he said, the time he puts into teaching is worth it.
“I enjoy distributing the information and giving students the opportunity to hear and see things they haven’t heard or seen before, particularly about the diversity of life on earth and how it got to be this way, the evolution of life on earth,” he said.
