School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

I began my fisheries career in Santa Cruz, California, when I took a night job as a deckhand on a local fishing boat while also taking a course in biological oceanography from the University of California Santa Cruz.  The course included a section on climate variability and the impact on fisheries resources, with a focus on the classic story of the rise and fall of both the California sardine fishery and the Peruvian anchoveta fishery.  The fishing boat was called “La Dulce Vita,” and the captain was a 70-year-old Italian fisherman who had experienced the collapse, as well as the then nascent recovery, of the California sardine firsthand.  These combined perspectives set the hook in me for a career in fisheries science and management, and the fisheries biologists to whom I talked made it clear that the University of Washington was the best place to start to pursue such a career.

Arthur McEvoy’s classic book, “The Fisherman’s Problem,” had inspired me to better understand how fishery science informed fisheries management, and thus I started at the School of Marine Affairs, with a plan to keep a hand in science by working with Bob Francis at SAFS on a paleoecology project that he and PhD student Diego Holmgren were just launching.  The following summer Bob arranged for a whirlwind of field work throughout Alaska to search for other potential sites for similar work.  With a small gravity coring tool, I joined a Gulf of Alaska bottom trawl survey to core Pavlof Bay and spent a week gillnetting sockeye on the Port Moller test fishery to sample nearby Herendeen Bay. I also worked on a halibut longliner out of Kodiak Island, sampling several promising bays and inlets in between setting and retrieving the gear.  Although none of our locations ultimately proved promising, it was amazing to have the chance to use so many different types of fieldwork in some of the most beautiful and productive waters on the planet.

My curriculum at the time was a joint program comprised of fisheries science and fisheries management and included the FISH 456/457/458 series (with Gunderson, Schwartzman, and Hilborn, respectively) as well as several case studies in fisheries management led by Ellen Pikitch and Bob Francis.  After completing that program, I went a very different direction and completed a Knauss Sea Grant fellowship in Washington, DC. That experience put me squarely at the intersection of science and policy.  We held hearings on implementation of the 1996 Sustainable Fisheries Act, on the collapse of West Coast groundfish populations, and on the West Coast dungeness crab fishery.  As I wrapped up my year on Capitol Hill, the Ecosystem Principles Advisory Panel (EPAP) produced a report on ecosystem-based fisheries management that had been requested by Congress in the Sustainable Fisheries Act, and which included Bob Francis and Chair Dave Fluharty (SMA) among the panel members.  Although my master’s degree had given me a taste of fisheries science and modeling, the report inspired me to go back for more, and I lined up a project working with Bob to accomplish many of the recommendations of the EPAP report for the fisheries of the California Current.

I was very fortunate to start this work just as Kerim Aydin (PhD, 2000) was finishing his dissertation research and starting a comparable analysis at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center.  He was a pillar of sanity in the otherwise nearly absurd effort to condense such a complex and dynamic ecosystem into a modest set of bioenergetics and food habits matrices.  Vera Agostini began her dissertation research in the Francis lab in the same year, with the objective of better understanding the drivers of variable productivity and distribution of Pacific sardine and Pacific hake.  We both took the opportunity to complete not only our SAFS courses, but also classic courses in the School of Oceanography, such as Barbara Hickey’s course in the Oceanography of the California Current and Bruce Frost’s Biological Oceanography.  As for my research, my fieldwork took place in the library, where the deep dive into decades of literature became a fascinating journey through all of the components of this complex ecosystem.

Rewarding as that was, ultimately one needs a job, and an opportunity arose at the Southwest Fishery Science Center (SWFSC) in Santa Cruz, in their new lab built just over a mile from where I grew up.  I joined Steve Ralston (SAFS PhD, 1981) and others in Santa Cruz to develop stock assessments of West Coast groundfish. Presently, I’m a member of the Scientific and Statistical Committee of the Pacific Fishery Management Council, with no small number of other SAFS alums and affiliates.  I continue to support groundfish stock assessments, as well as run the SWFSC’s Rockfish Recruitment and Ecosystem Assessment Survey.  The dedication and support of SAFS faculty and my fellow students, as well as those of the School of Marine Affairs and School of Oceanography, gave me a foundation of knowledge and abilities that would have been nearly impossible to find elsewhere, and it is particularly rewarding to stay in touch with my fellow SAFS alums who continue working successfully throughout academic, agency, and management arenas.

Throughout my career, I have been fortunate to have maintained close ties with SAFS. In 1990, I graduated from SAFS with a PhD, and found a position with the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) in Seattle.  This gave me the opportunity to witness the impact of SAFS on fisheries science throughout the world over the last 30 years.

As an employee of the Northwest and Alaska Fisheries Science Center in the 1980s, I was assigned to work with Kevin Bailey and Robert (Bob) Francis. What a wonderful pair of mentors those two were. I watched as they wrote proposals to develop integrated fisheries oceanographic research with Gordy Swartzman and Warren Wooster. In 1986, Bob left NMFS to serve as director of the Fisheries Research Institute within SAFS, a career change that unleashed his creative approach to fisheries science. The following year, Ray Hilborn joined SAFS, bringing new energy to the School. I recall how much fun these key people had working together. The work that they did, and the students they inspired, have left a lasting legacy.

The late 1980s and 1990s were exciting times to be a graduate student in fisheries science. Amendments to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act were being considered, and when the Act was reauthorized in 1996, the precautionary principle was established as the foundation for sustainable fisheries management. Fisheries oceanography was also emerging as an interdisciplinary field that bridged applied science, oceanography, and marine ecology. The big three quantitative fisheries courses (557, 558, and 559) at SAFS were part of the curriculum, and we all spent long hours deriving equations. Although the coursework was challenging, this training provided us with the foundation needed to develop innovations in stock assessment and ecosystem modeling.

New partnerships were being formed between the NOAA and the UW to study fisheries oceanography.  When I arrived, the Fisheries Oceanography Coordinated Investigations (FOCI) program had been formed as a partnership between the NOAA and the UW. My major professor, Warren Wooster, sought to formally bridge the gap between fisheries policy, fisheries management, fisheries science, meteorology, and oceanography  He worked with Karl Banse (Oceanography), Bob Francis, and Don Gunderson to develop an interdisciplinary seminar course. Many of us can trace the origins of our thesis projects to that seminar series. The interdisciplinary collaborations encouraged by the UW led to renewed partnerships among the three schools that resulted in important discoveries about the role of climate variability on marine fish stocks.

The professors of today share that same integrative, collaborative view of fisheries science. While many of the faces have changed, the energy remains. It is heartening to realize that the interdisciplinary approach to scientific investigation within SAFS continues to prepare young scientists to address some of the most challenging ecological and social questions of our time. The partnerships between SAFS and NOAA continue to benefit natural resources, each organization, and the public. It is joy to still be a part of it.

Collectively, SAFS professors, students, and graduates form a knowledge network that extends all over the world. You can find us working with our international research partners or fostering scientific exchange through leadership within international marine science organizations. In my class alone, my classmates now work in Asia, Australia, Europe, and South America. As the next generation of graduate students endeavors to assess human impacts within the social-ecological marine system, I expect that SAFS will play a key role in preparing them to tackle the complex questions facing the future.

In 1969, I had a degree in economics and mathematics from the University of Michigan, but what I really wanted to do was to go to graduate school and build computer models of marine ecosystems. I interviewed at a number of oceanography departments, and they all turned me down because I didn’t have any undergraduate credits in biology. UW was my last stop. Tom English interviewed me and, not surprisingly, said I didn’t have a chance of getting into the oceanography department. “But,” he said with only a hint of condescension, “Fisheries might take you.”

And Fisheries did. Jerry Paulik took me into the newly formed Center for Quantitative Science, where he, Doug Chapman, Brian Rothschild, and Don McCaughran taught courses in population dynamics and the like. It was just the kind of program I was looking for. There was a strong group of graduate students in the program, including Gary Stauffer, Jim Balsiger, Bill Fox, Tim Smith, and Gary Morishima. Bill Lenarz and Chuck Fowler had completed their graduate degrees recently.

Quantitative fishery science was at an early stage in 1969. Computers were primitive, and computer time was expensive.  The quasi-Newton methods of numerical minimization that we all use today to fit models had not yet been devised, to say nothing of automatic differentiation. My doctoral dissertation was a VPA of the Peruvian anchoveta fishery. I got a PhD for doing a VPA. It was state of the art. Imagine that.

My dissertation research in Peru had been arranged by Jerry Paulik and done under the auspices of the FAO development project there, which in turn led to a job at FAO headquarters in Rome for four years with John Gulland and Luit Boerema and other great people. I returned to UW in 1979 when Doug Chapman recruited me for a research faculty position doing assessments of great whales. I also did some teaching (including Fish 558, where one of my students was Ana Parma). On Don Bevan’s recommendation, I served as the technical advisor to the federal court in the Boldt case. After that, in the mid-1980s, I moved to work for the state of Washington, where I did a lot of line management, but also sat on the scientific committees of both the Pacific and North Pacific Fishery Management Councils. I returned to technical work in 1988 when Don McCaughran hired me as staff biometrician at the IPHC.

When I first sat on the regional fishery management councils’ scientific committees in the mid-1980s, modern age-structured, numerically fitted stock assessments had just been developed. But, only a couple of stocks were actually assessed that way. Part of the problem was a dearth of age data, but more important was a dearth of people who could handle the statistical and computational demands. There weren’t many who could, and I wasn’t one of them. Fortunately, I was working at the IPHC with Pat Sullivan and Ana Parma, who had just completed PhDs at SAFS and moved in the orbit of Dave Fournier, Ray Hilborn, Carl Walters, André Punt, and Jim Ianelli. That same army supplied the present generation of highly capable people who are doing the state-of-the-art stock assessments for Alaska and the West Coast today.

I am retired now, but I still go to the Alaska groundfish meetings and the SAFS seminars. Quantitative fishery science has advanced dramatically since my grad student days, and it requires constant study to stay abreast. Thanks to SAFS, and a little help from my friends, I’ve been able to do that. In 2019, which will be the school’s centenary, I will have been a SAFS student for 50 years.

I graduated from high school in 1939 and enlisted in the Washington National Guard in November of that year.  The National Guard was activated in September 1940 and that meant I was on active duty in the Army.  I received my Honorable Discharge in October 1945 and was able to attend the UW on the GI Bill.  Many ex-service men and women were anxious to continue their education, as I was, and I think there were about 50 students who selected a career in fisheries and enrolled at the UW School of Fisheries.

My first contact with the School of Fisheries was in early 1946 when I registered for classes in my first semester.  The School was located in four wooden buildings that were constructed on lower campus as hospital wards during WWI.  Of course, most of my classes in my first two years were on upper campus, but the School had two survey classes that were taught by Harry Dunlop and Heward Bell, who were the director and assistant director, respectively of the International Fisheries Commission, later renamed the International Pacific Halibut Commission (IPHC).  At the time, the director of the School was William F. Thompson, and he registered me for the two survey classes in my freshman year.

Dr. Thompson was selected as the Director of Investigations at the International Fisheries Commission in about 1925 after receiving his PhD from Stanford.  Some years later, he became the director of the newly formed International Salmon Commission, which was created to restore the Frazier River salmon fishery.  Subsequently, he was made director of the Fishery Research Institute, a group created by the Alaska salmon industry.

In my junior year, I was happy to start taking fisheries classes. Loren “Doc” Donaldson created a salmon and trout hatchery, and we students did the hands-on work.  Prior to my year in his class, Donaldson had conducted selective breeding of rainbow trout and developed a race of fast-growing trout that he planted in Green Lake in Seattle to the delight of many trout fishermen. Donaldson took our class out to the fish hatchery in Auburn where we mixed eggs and sperm from mature king salmon, placed them in troughs in the lab with running water to hatch, and fed them until they were ready to migrate to sea.  They were released at the UW, and Donaldson started a UW salmon run.

I also took classes from Alan Delacy, who taught fish life history, and Arthur Welander, who taught fish classification.  And, I took one class from Dr. James Lynch, who taught life history and classification of mollusks.

Because WWII diverted many potential students for military service, all the fishery agencies struggled to carry out their duties during and right after the war.  They needed fishery biologists most of all, and I was hired by the IPHC before I completed my BS degree.  Things I learned in the service gave me a strong desire to get a BS degree, and I can honestly say that my service experiences led me to a very rewarding career.  I retired as the assistant director of the IPHC after 36 years of employment as a fishery research biologist.