School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

Melissa and Juan started their Aquatic and Fishery careers long before moving to Seattle from Ohio and Argentina, respectively, to add School and Sciences. They found much more than that at SAFS.

Melissa grew up on the shores of Lake Erie, doing undergraduate fieldwork on endangered freshwater mussels, subsequently completing her MS at The Ohio State University (OSU). At OSU, she sat in the Byrd Polar Research Center, where climate and climate change were the principal research topics that seized her interest. While at OSU, she was awarded a National Science Foundation Summer Institute Fellowship to work in Japan, and then a John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship to work on fisheries issues at the intersection of science, management, and politics within the US Department of State, Office of Marine Conservation. This perked her interest in applied quantitative fisheries research, leading her to pursue a PhD that integrated her earlier climate interest with fisheries population dynamics. Dr. Pamela Mace (then NMFS), whom Melissa met while working in Washington DC, introduced her to Drs. Richard Methot (NMFS, BS, 1975), André Punt, and Ray Hilborn, who supported her successful application to the NMFS-Sea Grant Fellow in Population Dynamics. Melissa relocated to the University of Washington (UW) during 2002. In Melissa’s own words: “Three things lured me to Seattle: the mountains, the sea, and graduate school, but I had no idea how much I would gain from my time at the UW.” Melissa benefited from being in André’s first cohort of graduate students and from his energy and enthusiasm for teaching. “Collectively, we were probably the least quantitatively trained group of incoming students that André will ever accept into his lab. Given that we needed to build a quantitative skill set quickly, André created a series of special ‘off book’ classes, focused on coding and modeling skills that have since evolved into for-credit courses within SAFS.” The quantitative fisheries community in Seattle is unique in that between SAFS and NMFS there is a critical mass of people thinking about, and working on, state-of-the-art quantitative fisheries issues, making Seattle one of the best places in the world to be working in fisheries. Many of these people are not only intellectual companions and colleagues, but are also friends and family. “To that end, one of the greatest things about SAFS was meeting my husband, Juan Valero, while we were both students,” says Melissa.

Juan was born into a family of fishermen and seafarers, and as such has always being drawn to the sea. Like Melissa, he also grew up by the water, next to the largest fishing harbor in the southwest Atlantic (Mar del Plata, Argentina), and he started his undergraduate work with shellfish (Patagonian scallops). Argentina did not have formal graduate programs in fisheries or quantitative population modeling. Juan actually failed the final exam of the only fisheries class offered by exploring what would happen when departing from the assumption of known natural mortality and invariant by age in a simple cohort equilibrium model—it was time to move! Juan was asked to apply to three universities, yet he only wanted to go to one, it was the UW or BUST—“it took a bit of convincing to get my application submitted.” Juan will forever be grateful for the support not only from Fulbright, but also from other funding sources that supported him during his MS and PhD work, including SAFS, Washington Sea Grant, the William H. Pierre Fellowship, the Floyd E. Ellis Memorial Scholarship, the James and Joy Ellis Scholarship in Fisheries, and the Claire L. and Evelyn S. Egtvedt Fellowship. Moving to Seattle was not easy for Juan, but the SAFS community was more than he could have imagined, with students, post-docs and faculty from what seemed like every corner of the world. Over the years, some of them became part of his family, figuratively and literally. On the one hand, many fellow students (too many to name here), along with mentors like Janet and David Armstrong, Ulrike and Ray Hilborn, and Ana Parma (PhD, 1989) and Lobo Orensanz (PhD, 1988) became dear friends, essentially adopted family. On the other hand, Melissa Haltuch became his wife.

How Melissa and Juan started dating goes beyond the scope of this story; suffice to say it was the “longest, farthest away first date-no-date ever” during a couple of weeks spent hiking around Torres del Paine (Chilean Patagonia) and southern Argentina. Years after returning from that trip, André suggested that Melissa talk with one of Ray’s students about some analyses that could be relevant to her PhD, none other than Juan, wondering if she perhaps knew him…Melissa broke the news that they were actually a couple and living together! André was the last to know!

Melissa and Juan transitioned from student work to post-graduate employment prior to graduation, similar to many other SAFS quantitative students, attesting to both to the high quality of education at SAFS and the need in one of the fields that the School excels in worldwide. Melissa

began working with the NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, where she is assessing groundfish stocks for management, and conducting research on climate and fisheries issues, stock assessment methods, management strategy evaluation, and west coast groundfish transboundary fisheries. She is also a member of the North Pacific Research Board Science Panel. Juan’s transition was not as smooth. He was hired by the International Pacific Halibut Commission during 2008, where he poured his heart and mind into continuing some of the groundbreaking work started there decades ago by some of the giants in the field of fisheries, many of them also SAFS alumni. However, his scientific findings did not support the official view of a rapidly rebuilding stock, instead suggesting that persistent methodological issues had been masking a declining stock, which he suggested should be acknowledged and corrected, while providing alternative methods to do so. His scientific findings were not supported internally, some of his work was censored, and eventually he was fired in 2012 without cause. During this time, support from the SAFS community was crucial to overcoming this professional and personal crisis, starting with Melissa and then spanning informal and formal letters of support and job offers from SAFS alumni, faculty, and staff. Sometimes you can lose your job for doing your job, or you can keep your job and lose your integrity. Well, Juan lost that job, kept his integrity, got up on his feet thanks in great part to the SAFS family and has been vindicated by history. He currently works as an independent fisheries research scientist/consultant focusing on stock assessment, management strategy evaluation and education. He has been involved in international research programs, stock assessments, and management strategy evaluation for industrial, recreational, and artisanal fisheries around the world.

Melissa and Juan are involved in shaping the next generation of SAFS students and future fishery scientists. Melissa is a SAFS affiliate faculty member, serving on graduate student committees, guest lecturing, and teaching classes. Juan is an associated research scientist of the Center for the Advancement of Population Assessment Methodology (CAPAM), where some of his work includes mentoring SAFS students in real world fisheries work. In addition to teaching at SAFS, Melissa and Juan organize fisheries stock assessment and management courses and workshops internationally and maintain international collaborations with institutions in Chile and Argentina.

Melissa and Juan conclude, “SAFS and the Seattle fisheries community have been foundational in making us the people we are today, both as individuals, family, and community. We expect that this influence will extend to our daughter as she grows up in Seattle, exposed to the exceptional community at SAFS.”

All in the (marine science) family

The Buckley/Gómez-Buckley family has a “score card” at SAFS that reads, BS – 2, MS – 3, PhD -1, with 1 PhD on the horizon. Ours is truly a family with adventures in marine science that over the years have ranged from the Arctic Ocean south to the Coral Sea, and from the Philippine Sea east to the Indian Ocean.

Ray Buckley started the family’s long association with marine sciences at the UW, receiving a BS in 1963 and an MS in 1969 from the College of Fisheries. In 1963, he embarked on a 4.5-decade-long research career with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, from which he retired in 2008 as senior research scientist. At WDFW, Ray specialized in recreational fishery enhancement and research on marine fishes. He maintained close relationships with SAFS faculty. In 1972, Dean Doug Chapman appointed Ray affiliate assistant professor to provide expertise on marine fishes and artificial reef habitats on MS and PhD committees; he served in this role until 1990, when he started a PhD program at SAFS. Research on substrate-associated recruitment of juvenile rockfishes in the Salish Sea led to a PhD in 1997, and Ray was re-appointed affiliate assistant professor after earning his degree.

Ray’s career in Washington has been punctuated by many diversions for research in the tropical north and south Pacific, Caribbean, Indian Ocean, and the Red Sea. It was during one of these diversions as chief fishery biologist in American Samoa (1985–1987), that Ray’s son, Troy Buckley, started the family’s adventure in marine science. Troy received a BS in 1987 from the College of Fisheries, and a (1986) pre-graduation present of a ticket to American Samoa, where he stayed and worked with Ray. Troy was hired by the American Samoan Department of

Marine and Wildlife Resources in 1987, where he worked for three years, including research on the food habits of yellowfin tuna near fish aggregation devices (FADs) that became the basis for his 1995 MS at SAFS.  Troy’s subsequent professional research and adventures have been with NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center, studying the feeding ecology of North Pacific marine fishes, from the Channel Islands, California to Barrow Canyon, Alaska.

Ray and Troy’s father/son research adventures in American Samoa were conducted both on, and under, south Pacific waters. For extra fun, they played on the Nu’uuli Village soccer team, and Troy also found time to paddle six-man outrigger canoes in ocean races for the Fetūlele Canoe Club. Sharing marine science interests within the family made great careers extra special. Ray often thought, after a day of diving surveys on coral reefs, or test fisheries around FADs, “they are actually paying me to do this—amazing!” One “world-class” highlight came when Troy and Ray were walking along the plumeria-scented beach of a barely inhabited atoll, sharing the load of a goody-bag full of hard-won spiny lobster, under the light of a rising half-moon. Ray’s comment was “It just does not get any better than this”.

However, it did get better. At a fateful 1990 Marine Technology Conference in the Canary Islands, Spain, Ray crossed paths with Marta Gómez-Llorente, a marine biologist studying at the Universitad de Las Palmas. In 1991, Marta transferred her post-baccalaureate work to SAFS, and became Marta Gómez-Buckley. In 2001, she received an MS for research on drifting kelp mat habitats as conduits for recruitment of juvenile rockfishes. Over the years, Marta has been a research biologist, raised a daughter, taught high school science and Spanish, and eventually returned to SAFS in 2017 to start a PhD program, conducting (genetics heavy) research on the community ecology of crypto-benthic coral reef fishes in Vava’u, Tonga. From their meeting, Ray and Marta have conducted research together, mainly on, and under, the waters of the Salish Sea, the Caribbean, and the tropical Pacific. Marta also joined Ray and Troy in mentoring many SAFS capstone research students over the years. Marta’s current field work in Vava’u, Tonga, also involves Ray and Troy; December 2018 will find them joining Marta for the next family tropical marine research adventure.

A common thread through much of the Buckley/Gómez-Buckley family’s graduate careers has been Bruce Miller, now professor emeritus, who was a continual source of expertise on the ecology, biology, and life history of marine fishes—a unique area of expertise at SAFS. Bruce was committee chair on Troy’s MS, Ray’s PhD, and Marta’s MS, and he continues as a close family friend and colleague.

Love at First Fish

“Hey, what does your Leslie matrix look like?” Anne and I were already good friends and regular study buddies by my final quarter as a Master’s student in 2004. We shared mutual embarrassment when Don Gunderson looked over our shoulders and could barely hold back his disappointment as we struggled to fill in an age-structured Leslie matrix. Our early days as friends shaped our future together. Anne likes to believe she shifted my dreams of semi-pro bass fishing and lure testing to PhD fisheries researcher. In turn, I honed Anne’s research acumen by

increasing her acceptance of salmon and freshwater ecosystems as legitimate and interesting study subjects. -Chris

“Have you ever tried a drop-shot rig for lingcod?” This was said during Chris’ intensive bass fishing phase, when he tried to bring his warmwater recreational sensibilities to a marine reserve in the San Juan Islands. It turns out that the drop-shot rig worked great, as did sight fishing for aggressive lingcod in the kelp canopy. I had many volunteers help me fish for science over the years – around 60 in total – but Chris was the cream of the crop. He had the highest catch per unit effort of any volunteer (yes, I kept track) and also picked the best snacks. We wrote a rap together about the life and times of Jethro, one of my acoustically tagged lingcod, as we tracked his stealthy movements through the night. It was in the field where we really got to know each other. Chris helped me hook lingcod in the San Juans, and I helped him pull gillnets on Lake Washington. In the early days, we debated (only half-jokingly) about the merits of fresh- versus saltwater ecosystems; in the end, we have found shared curiosity and wonder in both places. –Anne

We can move wherever you want, except to an island.” It was time for Anne to realize her years of hard work and find a fulfilling faculty position. I did my best to keep an open mind about potential locations. Juneau – with no connection to a continental road-system and surrounded by impassable icefields (i.e., basically an island) – was pushing the limits of my comfort zone. But we did it, and seven years have flown by. Anne is an associate professor of fisheries at University of Alaska Fairbanks and I am an ecologist with the National Park Service. We still go fishing and even write the occasional paper together. In 2014, we welcomed James Neil Sergeant to the world and have enjoyed watching him become a resilient, puddle-loving Alaskan kid with an intense interest in everything around him. -Chris

“Hey Dad, the velcro star has a lot of pedicellariae.” Our stomachs dropped. Was our only child going to become an invertebrate biologist? Until recently, our almost-four-year-old was not a big fan of boats and we would have to lure him (pun intended) onto ours with donuts. Fortunately, young James seems to enjoy all manner of aquatic creatures – the finned, the spiny, the squishy, and the slimy. Chris and I both still do a lot of fieldwork, so James is often parented by one of us at a time in the summer while the other is off doing “fishy work.” It’s just a matter of time before he’ll be right alongside us in the field, teaching us how to identify sea stars and reminding us of the joy we felt when we held our first fish. -Anne