School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

When I went to college, my plan was to become a veterinarian. But then I went to the Shoals Marine Laboratory off the coast of Maine between my junior and senior years and my life turned in another direction. I loved the power of the ocean and was curious about the interrelationships of the animals and plants (or should I say fish and phytoplankton). “Shoals” remains a great place for learning hands-on marine science—it changed my life’s path and led me to decide to become a marine scientist.

I grew up in upstate New York and earned my BS and MS at Cornell, an hour away from my childhood home. About a year before finishing my MS, I decided that I wanted to go to a far away, wild place and the first place that came to mind was Alaska. My parents weren’t too happy about that, as my younger brother had just joined the Navy and had a similar idea. College friends who’d been to Alaska encouraged me: “It’s a great place,” they said. I traveled to Alaska in 1982 for a job in Sitka and haven’t looked back since (well only once, to go to the University of Washington to earn my PhD).

Cornell University gave me a great education in biology, which has served me well. However, after five years at the NOAA Auke Bay Lab in Juneau, I realized that I needed more quantitative training to expand the types of problems that I could tackle. Two of my mentors at the Auke Bay Lab, Jeff Fujioka (MS, 1970; PhD, 1978) and Jerry Pella (MS, 1964; PhD, 1967), and a professor at the University of Alaska, Terry Quinn (PhD, 1977), steered me to UW. UW’s broad course offerings in probability, statistics, and fisheries stock assessment gave me the quantitative training that I sought. Professors John Skalski (advanced population dynamics), Ray Hilborn (fisheries population dynamics and management, and his always fresh way of thinking), and Michael Perlman (mathematical statistics) stood out for me.

I regularly went to sea until 2005. I enjoyed the fieldwork and working on the ocean and spent over 800 days there. My favorite was a study of Steller sea lions in southeast Alaska with year-round fieldwork where I got to watch how much things changed between seasons. Herring concentrated during winter, spread out to spawn during spring and then scattered to feed during summer. Sea lions shifted among seasonal concentrations of herring, eulachon, and salmon. During the last 20 years of my career, the best part of my job has been working with scientists from other disciplines of marine science. It’s fun to learn about areas new to me; it’s challenging and a bit scary (keep foot out of mouth) to analyze data and write papers.

I retired in 2017 as the Habitat and Ecological Process Research Program Leader with the NOAA Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Juneau, after working since 1982 in Alaska. Now I want to spend some time giving back. I continue as an Affiliate Professor at the University of Alaska serving on graduate committees and analyzing oceanography data from the Chukchi Sea with Phyllis Stabeno. And, I plan to teach a class on integrated ecosystem research and management at the Shoals Marine Lab in 2019.

The projects that I am most proud of in my career are: starting the sablefish longline survey, now 32 years old and still going, with Harold “Skip” Zenger and Captain Jerry Kennedy; the Southeast Alaska Steller sea lion project (my first multispecies field project); and the once-in-a-lifetime Bering Sea Project, which provided substantial understanding of the effects of loss of sea ice on plankton, fisheries, seabirds, and marine mammals in the eastern Bering Sea and won a Department of Commerce Gold Award. I enjoyed a career that spanned fisheries stock assessment and marine ecology, carried me around Alaska and the lower 48, as well as to the Azores, Norway, and New Zealand to provide scientific reviews and advice.

The UW gave me the quantitative skills needed to successfully complete these research projects and scientific reviews; these quantitative skills combined with my previous biological training helped propel me through a varied and interesting career.

“Why fish?” asked my Grandma, perplexed, as I told her I was starting a PhD program at UW. Apparently studying trees was completely normal (my brother was in forestry), but fish were too… slimy. Admittedly, I’d never been a fish lover, but I thought that the field of fisheries would let me apply my interests in oceanography and ecology to problems that matter very directly for humans – and that this would keep me motivated through grad school and beyond. I was right.

I grew up in Seattle, with my feet in Puget Sound, poking around and asking questions. I quickly found my way into oceanography as an undergraduate at Stanford University. In hindsight, a few experiences at Stanford set me on my path. First, I took a freshman seminar on El Niño (this was 1998), and for my class project I investigated the impact of El Niño on salmon in the Pacific Northwest. This led me to contact Bob Francis at UW, who had just published research with Nate Mantua on salmon and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Six years later, Bob became my co-advisor at SAFS, and Nate agreed to serve on my committee. Second, I became involved in field work that took me to Antarctica as an undergrad and eventually led to two field seasons at Palmer Station, helping with research on nearshore oceanography. It was an excellent adventure, and the experience solidified my desire to become a natural scientist. Yet I found I wasn’t enthusiastic about studying plankton. I guess I thought they were too small, and in my youthful world view, too far removed from the environmental challenges of the day.

And so I landed at SAFS, determined to study salmon and climate, and found great support in Bob Francis’s lab and soon thereafter in Daniel Schindler’s lab (when Bob retired). I spent part of my summers at a small field camp in Alaska as part of the UW Alaska Salmon Program (ASP), and loved being surrounded by so much wild, complicated nature. I also found that I really enjoyed the more quantitative aspects of fisheries. I was able to work with some amazing datasets (ASP creek surveys dating back to the 1940s and a Norwegian beach seine survey dating to 1919), and the quantitative courses I took at SAFS gave me the tools to tackle interesting problems. And, I met great friends, many of whom are now also colleagues.

Part way through graduate school I had the opportunity to go to Norway under a joint NSF/Research Council of Norway program. SAFS was flexible, Daniel was supportive, and I spent six months at the University of Oslo, studying the dynamics of Atlantic cod. After finishing my PhD in Seattle, I returned to Norway for a fellowship, which turned into a post-doc position, and I stayed for over 3 years.

When I returned to Seattle, I brought with me a growing family, and joined the Natural Capital Project. It was exciting work—developing tools and models to help inform big decisions, engaging with stakeholders, working in interdisciplinary teams. I learned a lot and grew as a scientist. However, when a job opened up at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AFSC) for a quantitative ecologist to work on recruitment processes and fish early life stages, I knew it would be an excellent fit for me.

I’m now a fisheries biologist at the AFSC, where I study… plankton. But they’re ichthyoplankton, which I prefer to think of as baby fish. I get to work on scientific problems that I’m interested in and that matter for our ability to sustainably manage fisheries under climate change. And, I get to engage professionally with my SAFS colleagues and friends on a regular basis.

It’s hard to overstate the impact of SAFS on my life and career. The mentorship I received from professors at SAFS, especially Daniel Schindler, shaped my approach to science. The quantitative training I received at SAFS has helped me at every stage of my career. And I’m forever grateful for my cohort of SAFS friends as we continue to navigate our careers, start families, take on new responsibilities, and figure out how to make the most of it all.

The story about how I arrived at SAFS takes some twists and turns, but all of them were interesting and eventually led me to the University of Washington and SAFS before I started working at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AFSC).

I grew up in landlocked southern Germany in a very small town. I spent much of my childhood at a local farmers’ stable and in the neighboring woods, and I knew from an early age that I wanted to be a biologist. I planned on studying zoology at the Eberhardt Karls Univeristy in Tuebingen after taking a gap year. I took a backpacking trip from Mexico to Canada and fell in love with the Pacific Ocean, and the West Coast of the USA. After earning my Vordiplom (at this time equivalent to an undergraduate degree) at the University in Tuebingen, I got accepted into an exchange program to study abroad for a year at Oregon State University in Corvallis. This is where I got my introduction to marine ecology.

After completing a year as an exchange student in Corvallis, I became one of the first National Marine Fisheries observers on the new “American” fishing fleet. I really enjoyed my time at sea, and worked for several months on various vessels, as well as at the large UNISEA fish plant in Dutch Harbor. During this time, I was assigned a special project on rockfish maturity and I greatly enjoyed collecting the maturity samples as a relief from some of the more tedious work as an observer. When I returned to Seattle, I applied to the SAFS graduate program. Don Gunderson was working with the NMFS Alaska Fisheries Science Center and had funding for a MS student to work on rockfish reproductive biology, and the samples that I had collected as an observer were part of the study. I got accepted into SAFS and worked also at the AFSC with Dan Ito (MS, 1982; PhD, 1999), who was a stock assessment scientist there.

During this time, my office was in the Fisheries Research Institute, and the RV Alaska was docked right outside the building. I had participated on a research cruise with Don Gunderson on that vessel and got to know the crew, including Tom Oswald (Captain) and especially John Drumm (engineer). One of my favorite memories during my student time at SAFS is the hours spent visiting the Alaska and sitting on the dock with my large malamute dog, drinking “boat coffee” and solving serious world problems with John and Corey, the crew of the vessel.

I finished my MS degree and became a SAFS employee working at the AFSC in the stock assessment group, mostly on the reproductive biology of rockfish and later Atka mackerel. My involvement with this species put me in the middle of the creation of the “Fisheries Interaction Team” at the AFSC. This team was tasked with assessing the impact of fishing on the prey field of the endangered Steller sea lion, including Atka mackerel.

This led to a large-scale Atka mackerel tagging project in the Aleutian Islands. At the same time, with the continued support from Don Gunderson, I was accepted as a PhD student and took on this new Atka mackerel tagging study as my PhD project. My time as an observer helped me greatly to understand what was needed to conduct a collaborative project with the commercial fishing industry, and the lessons learned from my time at SAFS and the help from all of the colleagues and fellow students helped to put this project together. I fondly remember the classes taught by Don Gunderson, Ray Hilborn, Bob Francis, Bruce Miller, and Steve Mathews, particularly the applied survey, fish biology, management, and statistic classes that built the foundation of my fisheries knowledge. Little did I know that this project would continue to occupy my life for the following 17 years! I finished my PhD in 2003 and was hired permanently at the AFSC. Our team worked with the commercial fishing industry, the North Pacific Fisheries Foundation and the FV Seafisher, and we tagged over 100,000 Atka mackerel along the entire Aleutian Chain during more than 15 research cruises and many additional projects. We studied the Aleutian Island ecosystem and the connection between fish and sea lions, and the commercial fishery. Our group really brought together scientists from many different disciplines including oceanography, survey techniques (Libby Logerwell,Team Lead,  Peter Munro, MS, 1989), fish ecology (Kimberly Rand, MS 2007, Troy Buckley, MS 1995), and tagging models (Jim Ianelli, PhD, 1993, and Vivian Haist, MS, 2002). I feel extremely lucky to have worked and continue to work with such great colleagues and friends. The connection between SAFS and the AFSC is still going strong and hopefully will continue on for many years into the future.

I started as a freshman at the College of Fisheries in the fall of 1968. I was very fortunate to have been awarded a Malaysian Government scholarship to study Fisheries in the United States when I graduated from High School in Malaysia. The scholarship was the blessing that molded my life. I knew I had to succeed. So I studied. I fast-tracked myself to earn three degrees at the University of Washington and managed to graduate summa cum laude in 1970. There were many mentors at the University of Washington to whom I will eternally be indebted—Dean Van Cleve, who accepted me into the College of Fisheries; Ole Mathisen, who took me under his wing for my MS degree on sockeye salmon at Lake Iliamna; Jerry Paulik, Douglas Chapman, and Robert Burgner, and UW Affiliate Professor Dayton Lee Alverson, who all guided my PhD program on groundfish stock assessments of the Bering Sea. The University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences is the only program that educated me and shaped my career. Everything I know about fisheries and the oceans started there.

Lee Alverson gave me the next biggest break in my life. He gave me a job at the then Northwest Fisheries Science Center after my PhD in 1974. That was the time just before the passage of the Fishery Management and Conservation Act in 1977. Stock assessments were my main assignments with the United States Government. My UW education drew me into two main issues—high seas salmon issues of the International North Pacific Fisheries Commission (INPFC) and groundfish stock assessments in the Bering Sea. I was always been a background stock analyst and liaison science person for fishery managers. I stayed as low in profile as I could despite becoming a Fishery Management Plan Leader for the North Pacific Fishery Management Council on Bering Sea groundfish for more than 25 years. I am proud to have helped design the 2 million metric ton optimum yield system that has sustained almost 40 years of fishing near that optimum yield for Alaska.

I was fortunate to have been drawn into a broader array of North Pacific fisheries issues. I served as a sustained science representative and advisor at the INPFC and its successor organization, the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission (NPAFC); the Convention of Conservation and Management of Pollock Resources in the Central Bering Sea; the International Pacific Commission; the North Pacific Fisheries Commission; the U.S.–Russia Inter-Governmental Consultative Committee; the U.S.–Republic of Korea Memorandum of Agreement on marine science and technology; and numerous United States’ bilateral discussions with Japan, the Republic of Korea, Vietnam, and China. I was always a support person and prepared the science background reports for the United States

I am so lucky to have served the United States Government. I retired in September 2016, and the NPAFC awarded me the NPAFSC annual award in 2017. One more thing: I am honored to have been an affiliate assistant professor at the College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences on its then High Seas Salmon program. Best wishes for the continued success of the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences!

I grew up in Poland far away from the ocean. I remember my mom often bringing home pollock fillets for dinner. During that time (early 1980s), pollock was often the only fish we could get in the store.  Later, during my studies on biological oceanography at the University of Gdansk (UG), I found out that pollock in Polish stores came mostly from the Bering Sea. At that time, I had no idea that in the future I would study pollock in the Bering Sea, work for NOAA, and attend SAFS. After completing my MS degree, I got a job at the UG Hel Marine Station in Poland where I worked for three years studying the benthic fauna of the Baltic Sea. Then in 1994, my wife and I decided to immigrate to the US. After a year, I started working as an observer in the Bering Sea groundfish fishery. In 1998, I got a job with the International Pacific Halibut Commission, and in 2001 joined the Bering Sea bottom trawl survey group in the Groundfish Assessment Program (GAP) in the Resource Assessment and Conservation Engineering Division at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AFSC). I worked mainly on research on survey catchability and on how to improve survey protocols and estimation methods. Interestingly, most of my work concentrated on pollock from the Bering Sea. While conducting my research, I quickly realized that I needed more training to keep up with the new developments in fishery science.

In 2008 (18 years after earning my MS), I decided to go back to school and joined SAFS as a PhD student. This was one of most exciting periods of my life. I found the atmosphere in SAFS very stimulating, with both professors and students working hard on the most pressing issues of world fisheries at a time of unprecedented development in fishing and monitoring technologies and environmental change. The classes I took were challenging, but also exciting and stimulating. I learned a lot and received tremendous help from my professors and mentors: Nate Mantua, André Punt, Jim Ianelli (PhD, 1993), and John Horne.

Now, my job is managing GAP activities in the AFSC. Our main task is to conduct bottom-trawl surveys to assess the condition of groundfish and shellfish stocks in Alaskan marine waters. We plan, execute, analyze, and report results from the surveys to establish time series of estimates of the distribution and abundance of Alaska groundfish resources in the Gulf of Alaska, Bering Sea Shelf, Bering Sea Slope, and Aleutian Islands. GAP work also involves taking part in the stock assessment process by providing survey-derived population estimates for stock assessment models, collecting data necessary to obtain ecosystem indicators, and performing research relevant to Alaska fisheries. Our research focuses on improving methods to estimate the abundance of fish stocks from data collected during bottom-trawl and acoustic surveys. We also perform research on estimating survey gear selectivity and catchability, and we evaluate the effects of the environment on fish distribution and seasonal migrations. We cooperate with other programs within the AFSC to improve assessment of shellfish and fish species distributed in untrawlable areas unreachable by the bottom survey trawls. We also perform habitat research to delineate essential fish habitat and the impact of trawling on the sea bottom. We also conduct research on improving estimates of abundance of semipelagic species, which involves the development of methods for obtaining abundance estimates from combined bottom trawl and acoustic surveys. Many projects conducted within GAP would not be possible without cooperation between AFSC scientists and SAFS professors, postdocs, and students. I am really thankful for this cooperation.

“Um, Bob, so…have you ever wanted to be a minister?” So went the request one sunny afternoon at the Volunteer Park wading pool, while we were sitting with Bob Francis (professor emeritus) as he watched his grandson. A few months later, Bob officiated our wedding, sprinkling the ceremony and our path forward with his salt-of-the-earth gruff charm. To say SAFS students ask a lot from their major professors was probably an understatement at that point. To say that SAFS is a core part of the arc of our personal and professional stories is not.

Sure, students and faculty land at SAFS because of the world-class science, but the SAFS community provides so much more. (And we’re not just talking about free drinks and munchies at TGIT here). In the early-to-mid 2000s, a crew of us would unwind by playing “pickup” soccer back behind the Intermural Activities (IMA) Building. SAFSers have always been quick to balance the brain spinning we do indoors with stretching of legs outdoors. In our case, while we worked down the hall from each other, our research didn’t bring us together – Jodie modeling large-scale fisheries (Major: Prof. Bob Francis; Secondary/ Interdisciplinary and Policy Dimensions of the Earth Sciences: Prof. Ed Miles), and Jason immersed in small-scale juvenile salmon restoration (Profs. Si Simenstad, David Armstrong). But, once on the soccer field, our shared love of questionably good humor and a lackluster approach to competitive sports drew team Toft together.

Fast forward over a decade. Now our kids are the ones playing soccer as we coach from the sidelines. As is common for SAFS offspring, we, too, seem to be raising saltwater aficionados – from bivalve and crab harvesting, to boating and beach exploring, the Pacific Northwest makes it easy.

Workwise, after a wonderful chunk of time at The Natural Capital Project, Jodie is now a marine scientist at The Nature Conservancy, where she applies her SAFS training to conservation. Continuing as a senior research scientist at SAFS, Jason researches the effects of urbanization and restoration opportunities along estuarine shorelines. Our work worlds collide a bit more now, which leads to good, meaty discussions about oceans, coasts, conservation, and hopes for the future. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

For both of us, SAFS was and is a special place for learning – about science, fish, the natural world, quantitative techniques, the list goes on. And for us and so many others at SAFS, that learning and the people with whom we shared our SAFS experiences serve as a cornerstone in life. Simply put, start at SAFS for the science, but stay for the scientists. You never know what may turn out!

Jennifer and Mark came to SAFS by different routes.

Jennifer was born and raised in Bremerton, WA. She was fortunate to spend a lot of time sailing and SCUBA diving with her family and friends in Puget Sound. Much to her parents’ consternation, however, Jennifer spent her first year of college in Kenya, which offered her a rare opportunity to spend many months traveling around much of eastern and southern Africa. She then returned home and enrolled at UW where she completed a BS in Forestry. Jennifer then worked as a dive master in Hawaii and then Honduras, where she had the unfortunate experience of weathering a direct hit by Hurricane Mitch.

Mark was raised along the shores of the Mississippi River in central Minnesota and spent a lot of time in the water during the summer and on the ice during the winter. His family was very active and spent a lot of time outdoors exploring the western Great Lakes region. Mark obtained a BS in Zoology from the other UW (in Madison, WI), and it was during his time there that he met his future PhD advisor and current SAFS faculty member, Daniel Schindler. In the interim, Mark earned an MS in Fishery and Aquatic Science from Cornell University and worked as a wildlife biologist in central Florida.

Their paths to SAFS began in the late 1990s, only a few blocks to the east of SAFS in what was then the Department of Zoology. Jennifer was a technician in Tommy Edmondson’s lab, conducting limnological research on Lake Washington, and Mark was a PhD student there. After a year or so of mixing socially with a group of academic friends, Jennifer captured Mark’s romantic interest at a cocktail party when she procured the world’s worst martini. Indeed, it got much better from there.

Four years later they were happily married, and a bit more than a year after that, Jennifer was defending her MS thesis at SAFS while five months pregnant with their first child. Jennifer’s advisory committee comprised of Dan Schindler, Dave Beauchamp, and Tom Quinn. Her research focused on the foraging behavior of juvenile sockeye salmon, and the key role that Daphnia play in their diet choices. After finishing graduate school, Jennifer had transitioned from the Lake Washington project into a position with the Alaska Salmon Program (ASP), where she was tasked with organizing their historical data into a comprehensive database.

Since leaving SAFS in 2007, Jennifer has been the principal at her consulting company, Sound Data Management, based in Seattle. As a testament to today’s digital culture and global workforce, three of Jennifer’s employees live in Australia. Admittedly, it can be a bit odd sometimes when she ends her day by asking people how tomorrow is going. For the past decade her team has been contracted by the California Public Utilities Commission to design and maintain large data systems, which allow the Commission to review and evaluate their $1 billion per year investment in energy efficiency. Jennifer also continues to work on smaller data management projects with various people at SAFS.

Mark finished his PhD in 2002 after completing much of his dissertation research with the ASP in southwest Alaska, studying sockeye salmon and the stream and lake ecosystems where they spawn and rear (Tom Quinn was also on his advisory committee). Mark then transitioned to a post-doc position with Ray Hilborn, where he began developing life cycle models for at-risk populations of Chinook salmon in Puget Sound, and that work continues today throughout Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.

In 2003, Mark began a full-time position at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center, where he currently works as a quantitative ecologist. His research involves a large network of collaborators from across the US and Canada. Since 2007, he has also been an affiliate faculty member at SAFS. Mark enjoys co-teaching a graduate course at SAFS in time series analysis, wherein he gets to witness firsthand the amazing students and the interesting projects that they complete as part of the course requirements.

Jennifer and Mark both consider themselves extremely fortunate to have been welcomed so warmly into the SAFS community. Over the years, the faculty, staff, and students have all been wonderful friends, colleagues, and invaluable sources of information. As they raise their children and enjoy spending time with their extended family in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, the rich experiences they’ve had through SAFS always stay with them.