James Crease was born in Beckenham,Kent,England, served in the Royal Navy from 1941-1947 before going to Selwyn College Cambridge where he read the Mathematics and Natural Sciences Tripos's till 1951.
In 1951 he joined the National Institute of Oceanography of the UK as a Scientific Officer. Early work was on the theory of storm surges. In the late 50's his interests turned to ocean circulation. This led to an 18 month project led by Dr John Swallow and based at the Bermuda Biological Station during which, and working from the the Woods Hole ketch RV Aries, mesoscale ocean eddies were described for the first time. Further work on circulation followed in the Arabian Sea and North Atlantic.
In the late 60's he established both the Institute's computing group and a shipboard computing group resposible for the development of real-time routine logging and navigation sytems.
In the 70's through the 80's he led the Marine Physics Group of the Institute (later the Institute of Oceanographic Sciences of the Natural Environment Research Council, and now a part of the Southampton Oceanography Centre). In 83 he joined the newly formed international Scientific Steering Group of the World Ocean Circulation Experiment(WOCE). On retirement from IOS in 1988 he has continued to work on data management aspects of the program at the WOCE Data Information Unit.