School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

I grew up in southern California, but spent summer vacations in the Pacific Northwest. These trips convinced me that there were more desirable places to live than the urban–suburban sprawl of Los Angeles and Orange counties. I always loved fishing and science and was intrigued by what influenced the behaviour and productivity of trout—melding my interests into a career in fish biology seemed natural. I also seriously considered becoming a professional musician (still play the sax and clarinet), but realized music was probably better as an avocation than a career.

While still just a sophomore in high school, I was fortunate to discover that one could earn a degree in fish biology, thanks to my cousin Dave Pflug (BS, 1978, MS 1981). Dave showed me around campus on one of those glorious summer days when Drumheller Fountain was gushing. I was hooked, but couldn’t afford out-of-state tuition. Fortunately, a Navy ROTC scholarship allowed me to major in fisheries at UW, with the dream of flying jets off aircraft carriers (alas—my eyesight faltered as a freshman). I aimed to get a BS and become a bush pilot/fishing guide in Alaska. But fisheries classes and work as a research tech changed all that. I really wanted to discover what made aquatic communities tick, working from the perspective of individual behavior, interactions, and performance up to populations and food webs. My first fisheries jobs, helping grad students studying estuarine ecology of juvenile Chinook and Chum salmon on the Skagit River Delta (Steve Foley and Steve Davis with Jim Congelton as the PI) and responses by bass, bluegill, and crappie to lake restoration techniques in Long Lake (Mike Gross) laid a nice foundation for exploring other topics.

My graduate adviser, Richard Whitney, had just stepped down from serving as the technical adviser to Judge Boldt on treaty tribal fisheries issues and agreed to mentor me through an MS on life history and ecology of Arctic grayling in a high lake in the Cascades, and then a PhD on the ecological role of hatchery rainbow trout in Lake Washington. At the time, salmon were managed by the Department of Fisheries while trout were managed by the Department of Game. Each department had threatened legal action against the director of the other agency over their dispute about whether hatchery rainbow trout posed a significant predation threat to sockeye salmon in Lake Washington. Dick Whitney’s calm, practiced approach for dealing with controversial issues brought the feuding departments to the table and they agreed to address the issue with a designed study and facts (my dissertation) rather than fake news…how refreshing!

I stuck around UW after my degrees, working halftime as a staff scientist in support of other projects conducted by the Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit. My office during and after grad school was in what’s now the Aqua Verde Café on Boat Street, and although it was rundown with ceiling plaster spontaneously crashing onto desks occasionally, it was the greatest office arrangement ever! There was storage for field gear in the basement garage/shop, a fenced compound for parking boats and vehicles, a dock for a couple boats, and a boat ramp alongside the building. I’ll always treasure the vibe in that building with the grad students and techs working all hours, punctuated by coffee breaks to talk “science and life” at the Last Exit (on Brooklyn) while we waited for our first-generation PCs to crunch through some analyses. We all took turns babysitting Jon Frodge’s (PhD, 1990) baby daughter while he was in class and his wife was teaching, and Scott Bonar (PhD, 1990; now the Coop Unit Leader at U. Arizona) introduced me to my wife Geetha.

I realized I liked the idea of a faculty job, so after a few years, I took a post-doc position at Utah State University, studying native fish ecology in Lake Tahoe. The post-doc transitioned into a research faculty position and then to assistant unit leader-fish at the Utah Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit. We spent the 1990s in Utah, building our careers and starting a family with two daughters. Utah is the second driest state in the union, and this prompted research on many of the large lakes and reservoirs around the west (Tahoe, Yellowstone, Flathead, Bear, Strawberry, etc.). We yearned to return to the northwest, and so we were thrilled when I was selected for the Washington Coop Unit position after a decade in Utah. I tell people that I had to go into exile in the desert for 10 years before I was allowed to come back home to SAFS.

I thoroughly enjoyed the following 17 years on the faculty at SAFS. My position was so appealing because of the emphasis on graduate teaching, mentoring, and research, and the job provided the opportunity to conduct a nice balance of basic and applied research while working with resource managers, researchers, and stakeholders. The opportunity to work with my amazing student, faculty, and staff colleagues has been an incredible experience and one I continue to nurture in my more recent position at the USGS Western Fisheries Research Center.

I’ve been so fortunate to spend most of my adult life in the SAFS community. Being surrounded by passionate, caring, incredibly smart and interesting colleagues at every level has been a tremendous privilege. I have many fond memories of my SAFS experiences and treasure the lasting bonds we’ve formed!

The ink was drying on my PhD as Jan and I loaded three small kids into a VW van for the trip north to Seattle and our new life. Dean Doug Chapman had called me 7 months earlier to express regrets that I didn’t get the invert fishery faculty job, but said my interview went well. Two weeks later, he called again to ask if I still wanted it, choice #1 had backed out.

Second place was just fine with me and so, for the staggering nine-month salary of $7200, we moved north. One week I was a graduate student, and the next a new assistant professor in UW Fisheries. I showed up for work in my California attire of new Hawaiian shirt and shorts, and was quickly advised that an unwritten dress code might factor into my future tenure evaluation; I changed my ways…sort of.

I was immediately assigned some of Ken Chew’s new graduate students interested in crustaceans (my topic) and quickly learned the huge value of students in a faculty’s program. I had never taught a course of any sort and scrambled to compose lectures and labs for several classes—times have changed for the better as we now focus much of candidates’ interviews on teaching ability and philosophy.

With some highly motivated graduate students, I moved into crustacean programs that generally combined ecology and life history with major real-world issues. The list grew to include recruitment dynamics of commercial crab species in the Eastern Bering Sea, Army Corps dredge impacts on Dungeness crab in coastal estuaries, adverse effects of pesticides sprayed on tideflats to kill shrimp that were affecting oyster culture, impacts of the Exxon Valdez oil spill on commercial crustaceans, advice to the tribal council in the Rafeedie decision concerning shellfish rights, dredge waste disposal in Puget Sound, potential impact of exotic crabs on local fauna, and many more. From all of this, 35 MS theses and PhD dissertations were written and I am very proud of all those people who were in my program. I’m sure I learned more from them than they from me.

At some point a tendency to have opinions about wiser ways to run a department overcame my better judgment, and so I competed for the position of Fisheries Director. To my surprise (and other people’s horror), Dean Arthur Nowell selected me to head the school in 1998. The School faced a challenge: a previous academic review done by the Graduate School was very critical of many aspects of the overall program and structure of UW Fisheries. Morale was low, we were silos within silos, and allegiance was to discipline-based “units” rather than the school as a whole.

What seemed a huge task of turnaround took concerted effort, but was achieved thanks to the united conviction and actions of our faculty. We wrote a strategic plan, disbanded the “units” and merged into a more cohesive faculty, changed the school’s name to indicate a broader range of science themes, and hired many new faculty in traditional and emerging fields of science.

I learned quickly that a faculty is a force unto itself, and that on a good day a director might persuade the faculty to take a particular action. Better was to put authority into the hands of highly motivated people—as chairs of leading committees—to push for change and reform, as I worked with them to define new directions. We achieved our turnaround and, 10 years later, the next academic review was glowing.

In 2012, after 14 years as director, it seemed time to step down. The school clearly needed a more quantitative director to maneuver through the emerging metrics of UW and the new College of the Environment as profound changes reshaped how resources given to departments were calculated. And so André Punt came to be.

Across the 14 years, I grew into the job as director and felt like the faculty and I became a good team. The most gushing compliment I received came in an off-handed way as a faculty visited one day to say he had accepted an offer elsewhere. After handshakes and “good luck,” he got to my office door and turned around. “I just want to say that you’re not nearly as bad as I thought you’d be.” There you have it…a job sort of well done.

My career in fisheries started after I finished my degree in Ecology in Brazil (State University of Sao Paulo, UNESP) and decided to change my research field from myrmecology to fisheries. Although working on ant ecology under the great Harold G. Fowler sparked my scientific curiosity and brought me joy, I soon realized that very few people in the world ate ants… Also, as an undergraduate, the quantitative ecology classes of Miguel Petrere captivated my interest. Miguel is a mathematician, philosopher, and ecologist, one of the most brilliant fisheries scientists in Brazil, and a vivid story teller. His stories about the people behind the mathematical models and statistical methods, as well as the tales about his work in the vast rivers of the Amazon basin and his PhD studies in Lowestoft caught my imagination. I obtained a master’s degree in ecology at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), under Miguel’s supervision, fascinated by the possibility of using math and statistics to study one of the last hunter-gatherer activities performed by modern humans: fisheries.

Miguel used Hilborn & Walters 1992 (Quantitative Fisheries Stock Assessment: Choice, Dynamics, and Uncertainty) as the main textbook in his population dynamics class. By the end of my master studies, when I was discussing my options with Miguel, he told me, “Carolina, you should do a PhD either with Hilborn or with Walters.” I was uncertain whether I could pursue such a PhD, as I would have to start by improving my English, but Miguel was convinced that I could do it, and that gave me courage. My friend and I decided to tour the USA and Canada to interview with Ray and Carl, visit SAFS and the University of British Columbia, and take the TOEFL/ GRE to be able to apply for the PhD program. Sometimes it takes a little push for a shy and inexperienced student to take the next step.

When I met Ray Hilborn, I knew that SAFS was the right place for me. He received us with open arms and such a warm smile that I completely disregarded the miserable Seattle weather. I knew SAFS would be a place where the human element would compensate for the days and days of uninterrupted showers, drizzles, and rains. This is precisely what happened. I merged into the festival of nationalities of the SAFS student body. I met wonderful friends, who enriched my time at the SAFS enormously, became my colleagues and with whom I interact personally and professionally to this date (three of them where witnesses at my wedding: Estelle Balian [MS, 2001], Juan Valero [MS, 2002; PhD, 2011] and Billy Ernst [PhD, 2002], but that is another story…). One day, the clouds cleared and the rain stopped, and I woke up to the lush forests, wide lakes and the Puget Sound. This is when I learnt the American saying, “work hard and play hard,” mixing studying for STAT 572 and STAT 573 with sailing vessels of the UW yacht club (thanks to Billy Ernst who introduced us to it!).

SAFS allowed for countless opportunities to learn, some derived from the tight collaboration with both the Alaska Fisheries Science Center and the Northwest Fisheries Science Center. In 2002, Jim Ianelli, (PhD, 1993) one of my committee members, came to the Hilborn Lab and announced, “who wants to work for me during the summer?” I quickly jumped up and said, “me!” This was my first experience working in real stock assessment research. The following year, Jason Cope (PhD, 2009) and André Punt approached me to propose another summer job, this time working on the assessment of cabezon. I happily took that opportunity, where I programed the model André and Jason developed in AD Model Builder. We used to “race” our model against Kevin Piner’s model done in Stock Synthesis, which at the time Rick Methot (BS, 1975) had only in FORTRAN, and we “won” (19 seconds versus 2 minutes).  By then, I had learned the fun of coding and customizing models and methods.

M.D. Souza Jr.

I came to SAFS with four years of funding from the Brazilian government and on a leave of absence from a faculty position at the University of Maringa, Brazil. Those were two wonderful opportunities, which would soon grant me the privilege to pass on my recently acquired knowledge to cohorts of dedicated students. But that also meant that I was on a tight schedule to quickly finish my PhD and return to Brazil. My studies were delayed with the passing of my mom in 2001. I was two quarters short of finishing my PhD when my funding run out. I was honored and surprised to be awarded the first Marsha Landolt & Robert Busch Endowed Fund in Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. The endowment was established after the tragic passing of the couple in an avalanche.  Marsha Landolt was the Dean of the Graduate school when she passed and, just like my mom, was an inspiration— a brilliant, fearless and strong woman, who left us too soon.

When I was ready to return to Brazil, I knew that my focus there would be teaching and basic research in fisheries such as starting data collection programs. I mentioned to André that I feared I would drop out of the “stock assessment loop”. He reassured me that being a SAFS graduate, I was never to leave that loop. And here I am, working at the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission on the Stock Assessment Program under the leadership of Mark Maunder (PhD, 1998) and Alex Aires-da-Silva (PhD, 2008), with William “Bill” Bayliff (MS, 1954; PhD, 1965), Martin Hall (PhD, 1983), Rick Deriso (UW Biomathematics, 1978), Michael Hinton (MS UW. Oceanography 1982) and Haikun Xu (Post-Doc fellow 2017) as my IATTC colleagues. Gratitude is all I have for this wonderful school that prepared me so well. Happy 100th anniversary and many more to come!

I first visited SAFS in February 2000. With a Fulbright scholarship in my pocket, I was “shopping” PhD programs in fisheries stock assessment. I felt instant chemistry with SAFS. The new building had just been inaugurated, and the atmosphere was so friendly. A stroll around the beautiful UW campus was the first of many that I would come to enjoy. There was also the U-district, where brilliant minds from the four corners of the world come to share their experiences. I would be calling it home soon, studying and writing many of my research papers in the coffee shops on “the Ave.”

Vince Gallucci, who would become my major advisor, mentor, and friend, brought me in for that first visit. He had just started his Shark Research Lab and was interested in the work on blue shark fisheries that I had been doing in the Azores. We would work together on some of his projects over the years, in particular the Alaska salmon shark project.

Vince’s background was the paper-and-pencil “analytical” school of thought in fisheries stock assessment, but he understood that I was more interested in the highly computational “numerical” approach and helped me strike the right balance between the two. Outside SAFS, I particularly enjoyed the calculus and intro to math stat classes and John Skalski’s classes in QERM; while at SAFS, Ray Hilborn’s (and later André Punt’s) FISH 458 and 558 classes introduced me to the “ecological detective” mindset and the use of maximum likelihood and Bayesian analyses—after which there was no return to the VPA I learned in Europe.

Vince also gave me the key to my dream dissertation: thanks to him, my previous work in the Azores expanded into a thesis on the population dynamics of blue sharks over the entire North Atlantic. This included working with scientists from the Apex Predator Program at the NMFS Narragansett Laboratory, among them John Hoey and Nancy Kohler, thus closing a circle: as an undergraduate, I had sent them several tag recapture records of sharks caught by Portuguese fishers.

However, my SAFS experience went beyond advanced education. Backstage at this wonderful program was a priceless human experience. I feel privileged and honored to have shared my path with a talented and kind group of students. I shared an office with Ian Taylor (QERM, 2008), with whom I learned so much, and rode the roller-coaster of grad school with an amazing cohort of international students, including Vera Agostini (PhD, 2005), Carlos Alvarez Flores (PhD, 2002), Billy Ernst (PhD, 2002), Manu Esteve (Visiting student), Jesús Jurado Molina (PhD, 2001), Carolina Minte-Vera (PhD, 2004), Arni Magnuson (MS, 2002; PhD, 2016), Juan Valero (MS, 2002; PhD, 2011), Alex Zerbini (PhD, 2006), and many others. Our profound companionship is still going strong, and fisheries aside, the immersion in Latin American culture they gave me has proved invaluable in my subsequent career.

Since 2007, I have worked at the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC), first under Rick Deriso (UW Biomathematics, 1978) and later Mark Maunder (PhD, 1998). It has been an honor to follow the many members of the SAFS family who have served on the world-recognized IATTC staff: William Bayliff (MS, 1954; PhD, 1965), Martín Hall (PhD, 1983), Michael Hinton (MS, 1982), James Joseph (PhD, 1968), and Carolina Minte-Vera, among others. And working with Mark, the most complete, but nonetheless humble stock assessment scientist I have ever met, has been a particular privilege. In 2017, I stepped into Rick Deriso’s shoes as IATTC Coordinator of Scientific Research, so now it’s not so much about writing assessment reports or research papers, it’s about managing talent and igniting team work. It is largely thanks to my SAFS experience that I am ready for this next stage of the long journey that started when I boarded that plane for Seattle…

Even as a kid growing up in the eastern Washington desert, I had a fascination with water. I tell my friends that I was the first kid to fall in the mud puddle in the spring and the last to crawl out in the fall. Maybe it traces back to grade school in Annapolis where my Dad taught at the Naval Academy and I spent a lot of time along the Chesapeake Bay. Anyway, I made my way to UW in 1961 where I majored in Oceanography. After graduation, I spent the Viet Nam era working as a civilian Oceanographer for the US Navy. I spent more time at sea than most of the sailors on board, but they couldn’t grow a beard, have long hair, or wear love beads.

I got accepted to graduate school at the UW College of Fisheries in 1971. My professors and fellow grad students helped me focus my widely distributed attention. First, Hiroshi Kasahara mentored me through my MS. Then Ole Mathisen and Dick Thorne picked me up to work with them on a hydroacoustic study of neckton in the east Africa upwelling system for my PhD. Part way to completion, Gene DiDonato hired me at the Washington Department of Fisheries Marine Fish Program to work on baitfish. I learned a lot about applied science and management from Gene and my new colleagues Mark Pedersen (MS, 1974), Ray Buckley (BS, 1963; MS, 1969; PhD, 1997), and Dan Kimura (1972, Biostatistics), and from my former professors Don Gunderson and Bruce Miller for whom I served on student committees and helped teach classes. Plus, I learned how things work and how to get things done in often adversarial conditions.

My new office, located on campus in the Mezzanine Level of the old Fisheries Center, gave me immediate access to my old office on the Oceanography Barge. Gene very graciously gave me time to slip out the back door to the barge to work on my dissertation. I found it very hard to keep my attention on my dissertation while taking on the new and interesting issues of my new job. I probably wouldn’t have finished without Gene’s help, and without the encouragement of Ole and my Dad, who both told me to wrap it up or go on to other things. I finally graduated in 1979, and dang, that felt good. After nine years, I moved slightly up the food chain to work in Olympia as coordinator of Puget Sound Watershed Planning (read salmon), trying to make sense of disparate positions of farmers, ranchers, loggers, Treaty Tribes, and the Department in building a watershed management plan.

About the time I got my 10-year pin at WDF, Don McCaughran called to check my interest in working for the International Pacific Halibut Commission (IPHC). I jumped at the chance for an even better job than at WDF and a chance to work in Seattle. From our office above the Fishery Library, I had a chance to work with many UW grads on the staff, including Steve Hoag (MS, 1968), Bill Clark (PhD, 1975; who I helped recruit from the WDF), Morris Wade (BS, 1972) Ana Parma (PhD, 1989), Terry Quinn (MS, 1977; PhD [Biomathematics], 1980), and Rick Deriso (PhD [Biomathematics], 1978), and to reactivate my ties to the folks at the College of Fisheries. Among other things, I hired Sara Adlerstein (MS, 1987; PhD, 1992) and Steve Hare (PhD, 1986) at the end of their PhD programs; this showed great wisdom on my part.

After 14 years of a wonderful mix of science, management, and outreach at IPHC, my wife and I decided that we needed a change that included warmer weather. In 1999 we moved from Seattle to St Petersburg FL. My wife, Cindy, worked at United Airlines and I was unemployed when we arrived. Cindy supported, us and I played tennis and rode my bike. I met Graeme Parkes who ran MRAG Americas, at the time a two-person fishery consulting company, and went to work for him. There, I performed project planning, assembled research teams, and conducted research, with a focus on improving management of aquatic ecosystems and the resources and fisheries they support. I was manager of MRAG’s certification program for Marine Stewardship Council and other sustainability and traceability assessments; manager for providing personnel to NOAA facilities (Silver Spring, Seattle, Woods Hole, St Croix); provided oversight of observer programs; prepared and reviewed fishery management and habitat management plans; and conducted workshops on fishery issues. Over time, people came and went, the company expanded, and through attrition, I ended up as Vice President. The company has clients all over the world. I traveled a lot, which is fun, exhilarating, and exhausting. We subcontracted with numerous School of Fisheries folks, including Director Andre Punt as a team member for the MSC Orange Roughy certification.

When people asked me when I would retire, I’d say when I don’t have fun anymore. The fun started to wane in early 2017 and I retired at the end of that year. I still do a bit of work as an independent consultant. It’s a lot more fun to work on my terms, and pick the projects that I want to do.

So I learned a few things over the past 50+ years of fisheries science and management that I might as well lay out, since I spent so much time here with things less important. The most important, get a good base. Ole Mathisen encouraged me to become a good scientist before I wandered off into other policy and management activities. I credit the faculty and students at the College of Fisheries for what success I’ve had here, thanks to a rigorous curriculum and stimulating discussions. I have also learned that fisheries is an amazing career, through which I have travelled to wonderful places, worked on exciting projects, and met amazing people. A number of my younger colleagues have told me that I mentored them and helped them get started in fisheries. While I had never thought of it in these terms, successful fisheries practitioners need to pass on the experience gained throughout a career to those who follow us, and I am very relieved to find out that I did that, even without planning to. And finally, have fun. I could not have worked so hard for so many years if I had not.

I joined SAFS (then called the College of Fisheries) in summer 1974 as a fisheries biologist after completing my MA degree research at California State University, Long Beach. I was accepted into the PhD program in 1976, under Ken Chew. Ken had a project that involved understanding the effects of the five sewage discharges on the shallow water biota in central Puget Sound, and he needed someone to work on the seaweeds. My masters thesis had focused on understanding long-term changes in the seaweed flora at 72 historical collection sites from Point Conception to the Mexican border. In addition, I had spent three years (1971–1974) as a marine biologist for Los Angeles county, monitoring the effects of the largest outfall on the west coast on the coastal ocean ecosystem. Hence, I was already well “immersed” in sewage so to speak.

Despite having a large cadre of grad students, Ken provided me with the support I needed to set a direction, pass all the hoops, and receive my PhD in 1978. Even more, he provided me a welcome home to accomplish my goals and to initiate my career.  Taking his shellfish courses as well as the other fisheries courses expanded my knowledge base that ended up being critical to my career. My committee members, Roy Nakatani and Bruce Miller, were also great sources of support and advice. Fellow grad students John Armstrong (PhD, 1977) and Craig Staude (MS, 1979; PhD, 1986) were fantastic to work with, and they taught me the value of developing trusted collaborators. After graduating, I spent a total of nine years (with a two year hiatus working for the Corps of Engineers in 1980-1982) doing research at the Fisheries Research Institute, working with colleagues Charles (Si) Simenstad and Jeff Cordell (MS, 1986) and others…these collaborations continue today. Si and I taught the first wetland ecology and restoration class, and we initiated the Wetland Ecosystem Team (WET). During this period, my focus changed from evaluating the effects of disturbances on nearshore systems to understanding how to restore estuarine and coastal ecosystems.

In August 1990, I was hired by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) Marine Sciences Laboratory in Sequim to develop a wetland research program, and I managed that program until I retired in 2013. During my tenure, I always looked to SAFS for potential new hires because I knew that SAFS grads had a solid training in the sciences as well as in practical issues facing natural resources. I have been able to work on all US coasts, in several major rivers, and in China and Korea…places I never thought I would get to in my career. I have been lucky to serve on regional and national committees and chair several conferences. I now serve as an emeritus staff member at PNNL and remain active in part-time paid positions as the senior science advisor to the Puget Sound Partnership and as a member of a panel that scores restoration projects on the lower Columbia River and estuary. I also am involved in volunteer service as a Governor’s appointee to the Northwest Straits Commission and as president of the Washington State Academy of Sciences.

Bottom line, my experience as a graduate student and fisheries biologist at SAFS prepared me very well in many unexpected ways for a long and enjoyable career in the field that I love.

When I think of SAFS, the first words that come to mind are friendship, resilience, and collaboration— all of which I was very lucky to gain as a graduate student in SAFS, and still carry with me. The journey to SAFS was one of many detours, a few dead ends, persistence (or perhaps stubbornness?), and serendipity. My love for aquatic systems, invertebrates, plants, and the outdoors in general began as a kid visiting lakes outside Bogotá (Colombia) with my family. This continued as an adult while spending time in Florida learning about estuaries, hanging out at the beach, and meeting a Viking from Iceland. After a couple of visits to the Aleutian Islands for environmental education and to conduct wildlife surveys, and checking out Iceland (quite similar to the Aleutians), I ended up in Seattle wanting to go to graduate school.

I was very interested in doing applied research in aquatic systems, which involved fieldwork and collaborating with different stakeholders. After checking out several graduate programs and taking some classes in SAFS, it was clear that SAFS was the place to be. The comradery in SAFS is like no other, always fostering creativity and collaboration. I was very fortunate to work, both as a volunteer and as a paid lab and field assistant, with several research groups in SAFS, including the Wetland Ecosystem Team (with copepod guru Jeff Cordell [MS, 1986]) and the Washington Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit (with wildlife toxicology extraordinaire Chris Grue and his lab). Ultimately, I joined Chris Grue’s lab and began my lifelong career studying native insects and invasive plants.

My graduate research examined the herbivory of a native aquatic insect, the milfoil weevil (not to be confused with the Fisher Price Weebles), on the invasive plant Eurasian milfoil. This was a wonderful project! I spent the summers snorkeling in lakes around Washington; interacting with other students, resource managers, and local anglers; and building up resilience. Some highlights related to resilience include saying out loud, “what a perfect day of fieldwork, not a single problem” and then realizing you just locked yourself out of the truck (keys sitting nicely on the driver’s seat), while standing in a bikini and a towel in the middle of the Potholes Reservoir Area. Similarly, designing a weevil rearing experiment that involved growing Eurasian milfoil (which is spreading throughout lakes and rivers in North America) in the lab and not being able to implement it. I thought I was a good gardener, but apparently, I cannot seem to grow invasive plants…. In the end, it all worked out and these lessons in resilience still come in handy today. Just last summer, after having a challenging day in the field in southern Iceland yet managing to collect some promising data and savoring the accomplishment for 30 seconds, a gust of Arctic wind took hold of my data sheets and made them disappear to who knows where. After a moment of panic and swearing, followed by calmness, thinking “It’s not the end of the world” and then, taking a walk downwind I found my data sheets wrapped around a wire fence 70 meters from my study area. So thank you SAFS for helping me build up my resilience!

Now, I am with the Environment and Natural Resources Program at the University of Iceland and try to encourage friendship, resilience, and collaboration in my students, as SAFS did with me. Together we look at invasive species, plant-insect interactions, and biodiversity, and overall enjoy what we do. If you happen to be in southern Iceland during the summer and see a person, walking in the Nootka lupine fields and maybe carrying a bottle of olive oil, some duct tape, and a hammer that looks like Thor’s hammer, it is probably me. Stop by and I will gladly chat with you about my insect herbivory work, which started in SAFS as a graduate student.