School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

I was pleased to receive an email from André Punt inviting me to say a few words about my over 10 years at the then School of Fisheries at the UW. Some of the recurring treasured memories I have from those years include the following:

• Completing a history of the Fisheries program at the UW that began with the wife of former Dean of the College of Fisheries Richard Van Cleve (who passed away in 1984) sharing a draft history that I used as the inspiration for the book Proceeds from the book were used to support programs in the School though I’m unaware as to whether that effort of love actually raised any significant income. Hopefully, someone will update it some day.
• Getting to know Lauren Donaldson, one of my heroes, who became a close friend.
• Playing tennis with Bill Royce, Bud Bergner, and other retirees, all of whom were many years older than me, but wore me out with their cagey play.
• Working with a highly talented faculty and staff, some of whom I had known previously, including Ken Chew, through my membership in the World Aquaculture
• Society and The American Fisheries Society.
• Participating in the writing of the undergraduate fisheries textbook used in the introductory course attended by hundreds of students each year.
• Having the opportunity to visit the Fisheries Research Institute field stations in Alaska.
• Participating in a dive on the Pisces IV, a Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans submarine involved in a survey of Puget Sound off Everett.
• Developing a halibut research program in collaboration with the US Fish and Wildlife Service field laboratory.
• A trip I took to British Columbia fishing with a benefactor who gave Ernie Brannon $50,000 for fisheries research in Lake Washington that turned into a million dollar endowment to the School. He and I had a photography contest and I got the best photo (of an eagle) and also caught the largest fish. He still increased his donation to the school mind you!
• Conducting trout and salmon research, often in collaboration with Ron Hardy (PhD, 1978) who was at the time employed at the Montlake National Marine Fisheries Service Laboratory.
• And many more….

I spent about four years on the faculty after stepping down as director of the School, and in mid-1995 saw information that Texas A&M University was seeking applications for the position of director of their Sea Grant College Program. Having worked closely with Washington Sea Grant at UW and having spent nine years on the faculty at Texas A&M from 1975–1984, I thought it was an opportunity and put in my application. The offer came, and my wife Carolan and I moved back to Texas where I started my job as director of Sea Grant on January 1, 1996. I wonder how many faculty members move on and later return to the campus they left years before?

We purchased slightly less than 69 acres of land 30 miles outside of College Station and built our dream home. During the next several years I punched a few head of cattle, got ranching advice from a neighbor who let me make mistakes before telling me how to do things properly (such as constructing a corral, tearing it down due to errors in my design, and reconstructing it; giving me lessons on how to properly repair a barbed wire fence after I made a mess of my first attempt; and so forth).

Texas Sea Grant has a publication arm, extension outreach program, and—as might be expected—a grant program. The latter solicits pre-proposals every two years, has them peer reviewed, and then full proposals are solicited for final review and selection for funding. Faculty members with the appropriate expertise from any university in Texas can apply to Sea Grant for funding. About one million dollars a year are provided for marine-related research.

During my tenure with Texas Sea Grant, the National Sea Grant Office (located in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) developed an evaluation program, and I had the opportunity to be on review panels for several other programs, which was an honor and a learning experience.

After promising myself to retire at the age of 70, I did so, and I was honored to became an emeritus professor in the Department of Oceanography at Texas A&M in August, 2011. The department was where I held my tenure while Director of Texas Sea Grant, but other than teaching one graduate course in Fisheries Oceanography, advising a few graduate students, and serving as acting department head half time for a year, my major involvement with the department was attending faculty meetings and social activities.

In 2014, we decided to sell the “ranch” and move to College Station, where we have lived ever since. We don’t miss having to drive 30 miles to a city that provides good shopping and dining.

Our daughter and her family are located in Kirkland, and our son and his family live in Keller (north of Fort. Worth), Texas. We have four grandchildren (one in Kirkland who is a sophomore at Central Washington University) and three in Keller (one granddaughter is in Law School at Southern Methodist University, and the other is a senior at Texas A&M who has been accepted to nursing school next fall). Our grandson in Keller is autistic and his twin sister is the senior at A&M.

We try to get to Seattle at least once a year and usually spend a couple of weeks. We always drive and make a few stops on the way to see friends and former colleagues.

We also travelled extensively throughout the rest of the US and last year took our first cruise (from Seattle to Alaska). We took a trip to London in late August-early September this year and are planning to tackle the Panama Canal next.

Congratulations on the 100^th anniversary of the UW fisheries program!

While still an undergraduate at UW in the late 1960s, I worked hourly as a lab helper in the College of Fisheries Laboratory of Radiation Ecology for Allyn Seymour (PhD, 1956) and Bob Ericksen (MS, 1966; PhD, 1971). This was followed by an eye-opening summer project at Petersburg, Alaska, in 1971 with Don Beyer (MS, 1973; PhD, 1977) under the supervision of Roy Nakatani (PhD, 1960). The project included fieldwork, lab analysis, and eventually, my first co-authored publication on the effects of salmon cannery waste.

After a short stint in the Navy and some fieldwork with the California Fish and Game kelp habitat project, I returned to the College of Fisheries for graduate studies. I always had an affinity for crustaceans and hoped to study shrimp aquaculture under Ken Chew. However, at that point in time, Ken needed grad students for the METRO Studies relating to the impact of sewage on the marine environment. I joined grad students John Armstrong (PhD, 1979) and Ron Thom (PhD, 1978) in a comprehensive survey of Seattle beaches, focusing on crustaceans and especially my new-found love: amphipods. My MS thesis compared the macrofauna at the West Point Treatment Plant over a five-year period.

With my thesis only partially completed, I travelled to Friday Harbor Labs (FHL) to examine a collection of amphipods in the lab of Carl Nyblade. Carl needed an amphipod specialist for his surveys of the San Juan Islands and Strait of Juan de Fuca, and hired me (and my wife Krispi) on the spot. This experience greatly broadened my grasp of the local amphipod fauna, and I was honored when Eugene Kozloff invited me to write a key to amphipods for his “Marine Invertebrates of the Pacific Northwest.” I was able to identify a suitable project for a PhD dissertation from what I learned in these studies. My committee Chair Ken Chew invited Gene Kozloff (UW Dept of Zoology) and Ed Bousfield (National Museum of Canada) to serve as external advisors. Thus began my research to clarify the taxonomy of the amphipod genus Paramoera, and to study the natural history of locally abundant species, which are at times significant in the diet of fishes.

I was in the right place at the right time when a vacancy for a marine technologist opened at FHL. This support helped me to finish my dissertation and build our home on San Juan Island.  I served as a dive buddy, boat operator, specimen collector, tour guide, aquarist, and whatever else needed to be done, including organizing the open house and putting band aids in the first aid kits. I became skilled in the use of specialized microscopes and the configuration and maintenance of desktop computers. Eventually, I became the go-to “computer guy” and built-out the computer network of the Labs.

When FHL was given a 43-ft troller, Bob Donnelly (PhD, 1983) helped convert it into a functional trawler, using many surplus pieces from the College of Fisheries. With David Duggins, the other marine tech at FHL, I ran the R/V Nugget for about 25 years, taking students out on field trips and collecting specimens for research by independent investigators. The Labs eventually purchased a 58-ft Alaskan limit-seiner, and I became one of the four captains of the R/V Centennial.

It has been a pleasure to assist so many students and scientists at Friday Harbor Labs for over three decades, including many folks from SAFS, such as Si Simenstad (BS, 1969; MS, 1971), Bruce Miller, Vince Gallucci, Dave Armstrong, Ray (BS, 1963; MS, 1969; PhD, 1997) and Marta (MS, 2000; PhD ongoing) Buckley, and Jeff Cordell (MS, 1986). Since retirement in 2014, I’ve continued to help out at FHL and advise students on the identification of amphipods.

My wife and I now spend about three months of each year in Costa Rica, where our daughter Sarah Joy, her husband, and our two grandkids live. My interest in amphipods now includes tropical species, and I occasionally volunteer at the Crustacean Lab at the University of Costa Rica.

In the spring of 1942, Bell Shimada, a senior in the College of Fisheries, was barred from the UW campus and incarcerated at the US Government Internment Camp in Minidoka, Idaho. From there, he volunteered for basic training with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team at Camp Shelby in Mississippi, and thereafter, received Japanese language and intelligence training at Camp Savage in Minnesota. Assigned to the Military Intelligence Service and embedded in the US Army Air Forces, Bell hopscotched behind the Pacific front line, ultimately serving in General MacArthur’s Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers headquarters in Tokyo until December 1946. After leaving service, Bell returned to the College of Fisheries and completed the remaining course work for his BS and MS degrees, followed eight years later by a PhD in 1956.

In early 1949, Oscar Elton Sette was recruiting staff for the new Congressionally mandated Pacific Ocean Fishery Investigations (POFI) on the campus of the University of Hawaii Manoa. In short order, Bell reported as a seagoing fishery biologist working alongside Milner “Benny” Schaefer (BS, 1935; PhD, 1950), Frederick “Fred” Cleaver (BS, 1941; PhD, 1967), Townsend “Towny” Cromwell, and Elton’s secretary, Rae Shimojima, a Portland (Oregon) native recruited from the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) headquarters in Washington DC, who would become Bell’s wife.

In February 1952, Bell and Rae followed Schaefer to the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC), which had recently been established. The IATTC was co-located with Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries (BCF) laboratory in La Jolla. This was during the post-war period of expanding Pacific tuna fisheries and an energetic marine science community on the West Coast and Hawaii. Close friendships with then colleagues included several from UW Fisheries: Wilbert “Wib” Chapman (MS, 1933; PhD, 1937), Richard Van Cleve (BS, 1927; PhD, 1936), Paul Olsen (BS, 1950), Frank Lowman (PhD, 1956), Allyn Seymour (PhD, 1956), Lauren Donaldson (MS, 1931; PhD, 1939), and others from BCF, Scripps and IATTC: William “Bill” Royce, Roger Revelle, Carl Hubbs, Warren Wooster, Elbert Ahlstrom, Gerald “Gerry” Howard, Garth Murphy, Richard Whitney, John “Jack” Marr, Withold “Witek” Klawe, and William “Bill” Bayliff (MS, 1954; PhD, 1965). These names are well known to fishery scientists and oceanographers of certain age and different times and, perhaps, are recognized today by succeeding generations in the scientific literature.

Shimada and Cromwell, who had also joined the Commission, continued their work following the principles of fisheries oceanography that Elton Sette had pioneered at POFI. Cromwell’s insights on water properties and temperature gradients driving the equatorial tropical Pacific currents, along with Shimada’s on the dynamics and distribution of tuna stocks, were particularly fruitful. In 1957, their collaboration included a research cruise off Mexico’s Clarion Island as part of an IATTC/Scripps/BCF project, the “Island Current Study.” Subsequent plans called for both men to undertake one more survey of Clarion Island in early June 1958, thereby extending their field research before Shimada was to leave the Commission to become the first director of USFWS Bureau of Commercial Fisheries’ new Eastern Pacific Tuna Investigations on July 1, 1958.

Coincidently and concurrent to their early morning outbound departure from San Diego’s Lindbergh Field, a hastily organized symposium on the “Changing Pacific Ocean in 1957 and 1958” was held June 2–4, 1958, in Rancho Santa Fe, California. The proceedings published in 1961 included the following dedication.

“This Symposium is dedicated to Townsend Cromwell and Bell M. Shimada, associates in research of many of the participants in this Symposium, who lost their lives, June 2, 1958, in an airplane crash near Guadalajara, Mexico, while en route to join the research vessel Horizon to make further observations on the changing conditions in 1958.”

That fall of 1958, while Rae was preparing to leave La Jolla to be with her family on Chicago’s north side, Warren Wooster, then at Scripps, undertook a modest collection of contributions from colleagues and friends for an education fund benefitting their young children, Allen and Julie.

The Long Journey Home…   

Perhaps the most cherished recognition conferred on Bell Shimada from his alma mater came on May 18, 2008. On that day, 440 Japanese American students from the UW undergraduate classes of 1941–1942 (both living and surviving family of the deceased) assembled together in Kane Hall for a long delayed commencement ceremony to receive their Bachelor of Arts degrees.

The University Regents citation reads in part:

“We come together this day to honor you and to confer upon you what rightly should have been yours decades ago.

We come together to restore. We acknowledge the injustice of the past, and we walk with you now into the future.

For your courage, your grace, your magnanimity, for your remarkable achievements in the aftermath of what you endured, for your allegiance to your principles and your country, the University of Washington is proud to confer upon you the degree of Bachelor of Arts, honoris causa, nunc pro tunc.”

Nunc pro tunc,“Now for then…”

With heartfelt appreciation for the UW’s enduring “Spirit of Inclusion,” and every good wish for what is yet to come, the family of Bell and Rae, celebrates the SAFS 100th Anniversary, and new beginnings with the Rae S. and Bell M. Shimada Endowed Faculty Fellowship in Memory of Warren S. Wooster.

My 20-year relationship with SAFS started back when it was still SOF (School of Fisheries), and I was still in Mexico City. One of the co-advisors for my BS in Biology, and later supervisor at the National Fisheries Institute, was Pablo Arenas. A SAFS PhD graduate himself (1988), he was, at the time, organizing a hands-on workshop to be taught by Carl Walters and Ray Hilborn in Mérida, in English. Plans changed a couple of hours into the workshop when the need arose for an impromptu translator, and thus, I translated for, and mingled with, Carl and Ray for the next five days… Encouraged by Pablo, and advised by Ray, I arrived in Seattle for the first time, having been rejected by QERM (as predicted by Ray), accepted by SOF, funded by the Mexican government, and neglected to look up what the typical weather was like.

SOF was, and SAFS still is, a place of opportunities: guiding salmon tours for little kids, organizing the Friday Quantitative Lunchtime Seminar, attending annual seminars with Carl’s lab alternating between UBC and UW, a welcoming community with international students (among whom the Latin American students instantly recognized you were one; as they saw you crash full-on against the glass door of the back entrance of the old fisheries building!—outswing vs. inswing or double swinging doors). The old fishery building had arguably one of the best terraces on campus overlooking the ship canal and the lake, and only one open kitchen that was like a waterhole due to the seemingly inexhaustible coffee pot supported mainly by staff and faculty and shared generously with students.

However, it was as a TA, and in a new building, that I really started to appreciate SAFS. While SAFS has always had great and challenging courses and a first-rate faculty and staff, SAFS wouldn’t be what it is without QERM and SMEA (back then SMA). QERM students increase the level of quantitative skills among one’s peers, while SMEA students bring depth of insight and analysis. While TAing PBAF 590 (Environmental and Policy Processes) I benefitted from reading essays from students with a policy background, rich with in-depth analyses compared to their more quantitative counterparts (economics, engineering). I also benefitted from TAing FISH 456 with Bob Francis. SMEA students would provide multiple solid paragraphs of policy implications where others would only write a few sentences. As a student, you benefit from discussions and chats with your peers even when you don’t take the same advanced quantitative or policy courses. As a TA, you get to read/review everything, sometimes discussing with other TAs, and you get a better appreciation of students’ strengths and the breadth of their contributions. But I digress.

While doing my MS, I got a graduate certificate on environmental management and then applied for what I thought was a job to work on ecosystem dynamics in the Aleutian Islands related to Steller sea lions. Only it wasn’t a job, it was a PhD. Offered by Kerim Aydin (PhD, 2000), it was to be co-advised with Bob. Bob had been part of my MS committee, and we had tried—unsuccessfully—to get funding for a PhD. So once I was assured there would be no TAing (I had already done it for seven quarters), I started my PhD and going regularly to the Alaska Fisheries Science Center. Upon graduating, and after one year as a contractor at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center, I went back to collaborate with Kerim as a postdoc, but this time as part of André Punt’s lab, until I became a research scientist at SAFS, and ultimately moved to JISAO, where I still work on ecosystems, still occasionally on the Aleutians Islands, still with many of my peers from SAFS, and with an ever-increasing number of colleagues from diverse disciplines.

So, what was/is it like to work with Ray, Bob, and André? Well, from Ray I learned to have fun with whatever you’re studying; his enthusiasm is contagious. From Bob, I learned to rejoice in your work, work collaboratively and incorporate multiple perspectives using anything from theatre to scientific papers, visual arts, novels, or music. Bob is an eternal student, and teaching with him was incredibly rewarding. We’d sometimes leave early and catch a Kubrick film shown as part of the class taught in the same room before his own FISH 101. Only Bob was there to learn from the professor, who was highly experienced at teaching large classes while that year was Bob’s first. From André, I’ve learned to respect and value efficient administrative work. He might complain, but he’ll also be quietly smiling as he watches people having a good time at the Spring Picnic from the comfort of his office.

Enough nostalgia. Ray, Bob, and André provide explicit, masterly worded, straightforward feedback—devoid of sugar coating, but also of malice. And this in turn teaches when and how to defend a point of view, however unconventional. They all are a little irreverent themselves, not only when it comes to science but to defending their students or the quality of academic endeavors too. Room FSH 203, so fondly remembered by Jason Cope (PhD, 2009) for its extensive use as a place for defenses and seminars, among other SOF activities, comes courtesy of Ray. Upon learning the room was strictly off-limits for the Friday Quantitative Seminar, Ray barged downstairs to the administrator’s office to argue otherwise… Or Bob, writing to UW’s Athletic Department that under no circumstances was their “one million dollar wonder boy” (Richard Neuheisel, then Huskies head football coach, first to be paid an annual salary of about one million dollars)  to grant student football players a week off from Bob’s class without his prior authorization. And then André, refreshingly candid about his professional and personal experiences. While they all take their work seriously, they don’t take themselves too seriously. And the three are incredibly good sports when it comes to withstanding students’ irreverence, be it doctored images, hula-hooping, or a dunking booth. This channeled irreverence is part of what I think helps fuel innovation within SAFS, building self-esteem in everyday circumstances and confidence in one’s technical knowledge and professional abilities. So for all that SAFS, here’s to a hundred more years of irreverence.

As anybody who’s ever worked with me can attest, I can be easily impressed by new ideas and, as a result, I can lack a certain professional focus. I learned at SAFS that this can be a good thing (within certain limits) and that, with some excellent mentorship, this lack of focus can be transformed into an integrative approach to science.

After graduating from Cornell University in 1999, I was extraordinarily unfocused, dabbling in a whole bunch of unrelated endeavors: technical writing, bird watching, rowing, coaching, fishing, and carpentry. I wasn’t especially talented at any of these activities and they weren’t inspiring any specific career plans. It wasn’t until 2001 when I took a job in the Ichthyology Collection at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology that I developed a special interest in fishes. Over the course of more than three years, Karsten Hartel, the collection’s manager, taught me a ton, and through him I made several trips on deep-water collecting cruises off New England. At sea, I saw anglerfishes with parasitically attached males, spookfishes with four eyes, and loosejaw dragonfishes with red-flashing lights. I was hooked on fishes and figured working on a PhD studying these odd creatures would be exciting.

There aren’t too many folks working on deep-sea fishes so the list of potential advisors and universities was short. However, I wasn’t at all sure of who and where would be a good fit. The late Ichthyology Curator at Harvard (and long-time Friday Harbor Labs instructor), Karel Liem, indicated there was one clear choice: Ted Pietsch at UW. In 2004, I interviewed with Ted, and later that fall I moved to Seattle and started as a graduate student in the UW Fish Collection.

My time working with Ted was dynamic and the most fulfilling period of my scientific career. Ted supported my travel to collections around the world, presentations at international meetings, and more fieldwork in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Most of all, Ted encouraged me to leverage the diversity of expertise at SAFS so that I could take an integrative approach in my study of deep-sea fishes. I essentially had carte blanche, pursuing projects in taxonomy and systematics, molecular evolution, biomechanics, and ecology. At times, I may have gotten a little carried away, exploring topics so far afield that it caused one committee member, James Orr (PhD, 1995), to remark that perhaps I needed to reign in my “intellectual promiscuity.”

In a school known for its focus on quantitative and applied aquatic ecology, an outsider might think students pursuing work beyond these disciplines may be isolated. This was certainly not the case for me. If Ted gave me the encouragement and support, the SAFS community, welcoming from my first days as a graduate student, gave me the inspiration to pursue my varied interests in fishes. Lorenz Hauser, a committee member, welcomed me into his lab to learn modern genetic techniques so that I could pursue work in the molecular evolution of visual pigments. Faculty outside my committee were just as influential. Daniel Schindler took the time on frequent occasions to help me work through the ecological principles behind the odd feeding strategies in the deep sea.

The community of students in SAFS was just as influential to my success in Seattle and later in my career. Eric Ward (PhD, 2006) and Pam Woods (MS, 2005, PhD, 2011) introduced me to modeling and quantitative methods, which are now a cornerstone of my work with fishes. Eric was particularly supportive by helping me construct a biomechanical model of muscle force production and jaw-closing dynamics in fishes. This work led to an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship that funded a return to Harvard after I left SAFS to work on robotic models of fish feeding systems. In 2015, I took a faculty position at Boston College, where I continue my work on fish biomechanics, with a focus on using quantitative and robotic models to explore how fishes feed and swim.

As I reflect on my time at SAFS, I consider it the most rewarding and influential time in my career. Ted, my committee members, SAFS faculty, and the other students were a singular group of mentors who supported my iterations through one new project after another. As a professor and mentor to students in my own lab now, I encourage students to take a similarly unconstrained approach and seek the mentorship of a diverse group of folks with different areas of expertise.

In high school, I had an engaging teacher, Steve Ufer, who inspired me to pursue a chemistry degree in college. So chemistry was my first interest when I started at Western Washington University. My interests roamed after about two years, and I started considering a degree in some other realm of science. It was during a summer job, sliming fish in an Alaskan salmon cannery, when I heard about the fisheries program at the University of Washington. Soon thereafter, I transferred to the then College of Fisheries. The program was a perfect fit, and I became hooked. I had two concentrations for my BS degree, fish culture and aquatic resource management. The variety of course work and hands-on work was ideal. In the mornings, I may have been guided by Professor Emeritus Lauren “Doc” Donaldson in chasing salmon to spawn them at the salmon return pond. Then in the afternoon, I might have been carrying a stack of punch cards to the Computer Center, usually just to see how many errors I had made in the FORTRAN code. I think one of the more unique classes that I took was a population dynamics class taught by Gordie Swartzman; the final exam was a challenging take-home test, and for the in-class final he sang sea shanties.

The trajectory of my career was set by a class field trip on a small trawler where we went fishing on Puget Sound. We extracted otoliths from some of the catch and tried to determine the age of the fish. It was impossibly difficult, and I vowed that, “I would never work with otoliths again.” About one year later, after working as a hydroacoustic technician on the Columbia River and an observer on a small Japanese stern trawler, I got a job reading otoliths at the then Northwest and Alaska Fisheries Science Center in the Age and Growth Program. My supervisor at the time, George Hirschhorn, cautioned me to “never say never.” Now, after more than three decades, I am still working with otoliths.

My studies with otoliths have expanded from age determination to various microchemical analyses to assess the accuracy of age estimates, make inferences about fish life histories, and estimate ambient water temperatures. Determining fish ages (counting otolith growth zones) for stock assessments is very important and necessary, but it was only the start. After about two years working with otoliths, I went back to earn a MS degree at the School of Fisheries (SOF) while still working at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AFSC). How many people know that there was a Laboratory of Radiation Ecology in the basement of the Fisheries Center whose main goal was to measure environmental radioactivity left by atomic bomb testing in the South Pacific? It was in that lab that I was coached by Ahmad Nevissi in measuring naturally occurring radionuclides in otoliths. My MS degree program was supervised by Don Gunderson as chair, Loveday Conquest, Ahmad Nevissi, and my then supervisor at the AFSC, Dan Kimura. For my thesis, I measured radioactive lead and radium in sablefish otoliths to estimate their longevity. Once when Don was looking at some of the radiochemical results, he poked fun at other research and said, “Wow, this is real science.”  These days I do not remember how many classes I took from Loveday, but there were many, and I remember they were challenging. In class, she was tenacious and skilled at finding different ways to explain concepts; the students benefited from that, including me.

I may be atypical because I have worked at AFSC for all of my career, but the world of otolith-based research has grown exponentially, and I have been lucky to be part of advances made in that field. At the SOF, the variety of the course work and the teaching of critical thinking was a great experience that prepared me for this line of work. The fun part of all this otolith research is how it has circled back to my early interest in chemistry. Little did I know.

This would not have been possible without the teaching, mentoring, and patience of my high school teacher, Steve Ufer, Don Gunderson, Dan Kimura, and my current supervisor and SAFS affiliate faculty member, Tom Helser.

My experience with the UW and the future SAFS started in the 1970s when I was teaching at Lopez Island High School and helping with AquaSea, a net-pen operation on the island. On the weekends, I worked with one of the employees, Tom Scribner (MS, 1977), who was a kayaking buddy and had just graduated from UW’s College of Fisheries.

One weekend, this very well-dressed, stylish gentleman showed up and was talking to Tom. Turns out, he was a professor at the UW named Ernie Brannon, and he had been Tom’s major professor. I was surprised to see such a well-dressed guy working on the docks, but he was amazingly knowledgeable about salmon behavior, feeding, and health. In just the short time I talked with him, I felt I learned more than the previous few months had taught me. Plus, he didn’t mind getting his hands, or even his nice clothes, dirty when we pulled up several nets to check the health of the fish.

I had previously worked on salmon tenders and gill netters, and my image of fisheries biologists was limited to folks who counted dead fish or tried to produce more hatchery fish. Now, I had met someone who was knowledgeable about the nuances of fish ecology and life history. Maybe the UW fisheries wasn’t so bad after all.

That summer, besides working in Alaska, I took a class at the Friday Harbor Labs that was taught by a brand-new PhD from USC named Ted Pietsch (it was his first class at the UW). I also met Bruce Miller and was very impressed with his research on tumors in flatfish.

I returned to Seattle, got a job at the new Seattle Aquarium, and applied to UW graduate school at the re-named School of Fisheries (SOF). I wanted to do research with Bill Hershberger or Dennis Willows, but both already had many graduate students. Bill and two recent grad students at the UW (Fred Allendorf [MS, 1973] and Gary Thorgaard) all suggested I go across the Montlake Cut and talk to this UW affiliate professor who was a NOAA geneticist, Fred Utter. Fred was an amazing person—he may have worked in a tiny office almost under the SR 520 bridge, but his influence on me, and many other graduate students, was great.

To make a long story short—I met Fred, we talked genetics, and I was totally enamored with studying genetics in salmon and other aquatic species. Fred and I talked about music, allozymes, and polyploidy (an interest of mine since high school), and he mentioned that Gary Thorgaard, while doing a post-doc at UC Davis, had recently noticed that some returning salmon had been triploid (3N) instead of the normal or more common diploid (2N).

Once accepted into SOF, I obtained a Sea Grant fellowship and started my research on triploidy in Pacific salmon. We were determined to create sterile triploid Pacific salmonids for rearing in seawater net pens and land-locked mountain lakes that would perhaps become trophy-sized fish.

We tried using various methods to create triploids and settled on heated water to shock the salmon eggs and block migration of the chromosomes on the cell’s spindle fibers. It worked, and soon we created various types of triploid salmon. We reared them at the SOF hatchery and at NOAA’s Montlake lab, and eventually, with the help of Dr. Conrad Mahnken, transferred the fish to a Northwest Fisheries Science Center field station at Manchester and also released some at the Seattle Aquarium.

I was hired as a geneticist by NOAA after writing my dissertation on triploidy in Pacific salmon and earning my PhD under Bill, Fred, and Ernie. I continued my relationship with the UW, helping to teach classes at the School of Education, School of Fisheries, and later, SAFS.

I also became interested in the American Fisheries Society’s Student Subunit program—wherein fisheries students can join the Society and apply for fellowships for tuition and also for travel grants to attend local and national meetings. I am particularly proud that the WA-BC Chapter of AFS has created a fellowship honoring the late Professor Jeff Cederholm  (WDFW Biologist and Evergreen professor), which each year funds an undergraduate, a master’s, and a doctoral student.

For me, the experience of working with these students from SAFS has been a high point of my career and an inspiration for the future. These students are smart and dedicated fisheries scientists, and I feel honored to have worked with them.

I arrived at the UW College of Fisheries in 1957 after an inadvertent break in my education, courtesy of Uncle Sam. The Korean draft had finally caught up with me after three years of study at Washington State College (WSC) in Pullman.  Following my tour of duty, I returned to WSC, finished my 4th year, but was still a few credits shy of my BS in Zoology.  That summer, I married my fiancée and moved to Seattle, enrolling in the UW in order to finish my degree, and hopefully attend dental school.

Between dental school rejections and difficulties in finding a job in zoology, it was a depressing time. It seemed that no one was interested in hiring me—until I visited the Montlake Lab of the US Fish and Wildlife Service near the Seattle Yacht Club. There, I was told that I could start as a biologist as long as I took a few basic fisheries classes at the UW College of Fisheries (COF) next door. Finally! I thought that this sounded great!  The classes I had taken at WSC in Pullman weren’t wasted, and I was already registered at the UW. So I decided to skip any idea of being a dentist and began my career as a marine biologist in the fall of 1957, cheerfully enrolled in the classes I needed to get my BS, as well as fisheries classes I needed for employment.

At that time, Dayton Lee Alverson was a guest speaker at the UW.  He had just returned from a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization conference on world fishing methods in Hamburg, Germany. He spoke to us about the distant water trawling fleets of the world and the major changes that were beginning to occur with the introduction of stern trawler-factory ships, which would make the current side trawlers obsolete.  These new stern trawlers were large vessels, and their different methods of handling nets and catches fascinated me.  I had no idea what a dramatic effect this speaker would have on me and my future, or what consequences the foreign stern trawlers were to have on the US fisheries, but he certainly held my attention. I was convinced that studying fisheries was absolutely the right choice.

The UW classes and the atmosphere at the school, were so engaging that instead of trying to find a job, I decided to apply to graduate school in marine biology. I was accepted and began my studies.  I had the GI Bill, my wife was employed in Seattle, and we had an apartment within walking distance of the COF.  My project was to determine the spawning times of brown and copper rockfish species in Puget Sound. During my graduate work my advisor Allan DeLacy arranged for me to meet Lee Alverson, the guest speaker who had so inspired me and who was the new director of a branch of the US Fish and Wildlife Service called Exploratory Fishing. I was to talk to him regarding his knowledge of rockfish. Alverson told me that the rockfish were a large group in the Pacific and he believed that one species, the Pacific ocean perch (POP), would dominate the commercial catch in the future.

During our discussion I had taken copious notes, and as I got up to leave Alverson came out from behind his desk and snatched my notebook! He then retreated back to his desk and began reading my notes, proceeding to announce that I had “misspelled this fish and that fish” and on and on and on. To say that I was embarrassed was an understatement. I had always been a very poor speller and to have it so clearly and publicly pointed out was my worst nightmare. I finally left with a red face and my corrected notebook, feeling that if ever there was a job with Exploratory Fishing I would most likely be the last to be considered.

I collected samples for my research with the use of the COF Trawler R/V Commando.  During 1959 and 1960, we made 22 day trips. There were three of us on the vessel: Tom Oswald Jr., the skipper; Olaf Rockness, the engineer deckhand; and me, a greenhorn deckhand and student. It was a wonderful experience. We would leave early in the morning and would pass through the Chittenden Locks into Puget Sound heading for Port Orchard.  While we crossed, Olaf would go into the galley to fix us a wonderful breakfast of biscuits, bacon and eggs. After breakfast, we would head through Agate Passage under the bridge located on the northwest side of Bainbridge Island, into a body of water called Port Orchard.  This area had a smooth bottom where trawls made in the past had yielded rockfish.

Since there were only three of us on the vessel, I had to run one of the winches when we set and retrieved the trawl. There was a brake wheel on each winch, which could be unscrewed to release the brake. When letting out the gear Olaf kept saying, “Make sure the brake is off and it’s not dragging.” So I would keep unscrewing it to make sure it wasn’t dragging—until one day when I unscrewed it completely and it sprang out of the socket. I said “Is this OK?” and he said many bad words. How he refitted the screw into the socket is still a mystery to me, but he did and I never unscrewed it completely again.

Recently when I was going through old logs of the Commando I found an entry that I had written on May 3, 1960 for trip #6017.  It brought back a wave of memories because that had been my first encounter with the open waters of the Pacific Ocean. Before I left on that trip, I had wondered if I would become seasick out on the open ocean.  There was no class about seasickness given at the COF, but there was considerable talk.

Seasickness is strange: some people get it and others don’t.  I felt that I probably wouldn’t because of the hurricane I had gone through on my way back from France at the conclusion of my army tour.  We were on a 623 foot troopship, and the seas had been monstrous.  I was proud that I never got seasick.  So in 1960, when I and two other graduate students had the opportunity to accompany the Commando crew for a week’s trip to the open ocean, I felt I would be fine.  We left the College on May 2, and by dinnertime, we were off Dungeness Spit and heading out the Straits of Juan De Fuca. A strong westerly wind was blowing directly down the straits and the vessel bucked into them. Since I was in the pilothouse when dinner was called, I went back to the galley and sat down to eat, but after a bite or two of spaghetti, I had to rush out the galley door to the deck—I was seasick. The motion of the Commando in that chop really got to me!

We put into Neah Bay that night and proceeded offshore the next morning and thankfully, I was able to control the seasickness at that point.  We made four hauls the first day out, each about two hours long along the so-called bread line, as the fishermen call it, just south of Cape Flattery. After the fourth haul was up at 8 pm, we secured everything and shut down for the night. Everyone went to bed, I in the upper bunk on the starboard side of the house.

As I lay in the bunk, I heard a noise that mystified me, a swishing sound. The Commando was very quiet with everyone in his bunk, the main engine as well as the auxiliary shut down and the little power needed was supplied by a bank of batteries. The noise came from outside, first from one side and then from the other as the vessel was moved by the gentle everlasting swell present on the open coast. It finally dawned on me that it was the sound of stabilizer cables as they moved through the water. I had watched them being set when we left Neah Bay for the open ocean. The poles stored in the upright position while in enclosed waters are let out to about 45 degrees on each side. From each pole a cable was attached, with a weight at the end, which is submerged below the waterline. It is designed to help reduce the roll of the vessel when at sea.

Once I figured out what the noise was, I should have gone to sleep because it was so soothing, but I kept wondering where we were drifting as we had seen light on the beach before we went to bed. I worried about the drift and it kept me awake most of the night, while Tom and the others slept soundly.

Morning came and everyone got up and went into the galley, where we waited for the coffee to perk. Looking out the door, it seemed to me as though we hadn’t drifted during the night and, puzzled, I mentioned that “We didn’t move much last night.” No one said a word. The coffee continued perking, and as they were drinking it, I looked out again and said, “That spot on shore is in the same place as it was last night, so why didn’t we drift? We should have.” No one said a word. When Tom and Olaf had finished their coffee, Tom told Olaf “Start up the engine and then haul the anchor,” and that’s when finally I realized that we had anchored all night in the open ocean.  I had thought that no one in their right mind would ever anchor in the open ocean. If I had known that it was common practice I’d have slept a lot better. Talk about a greenhorn…

My research was completed but one requirement to convert French text into English was holding me back. When I was overseas in France I had taken a French class, which I passed and used for my undergraduate language requirement. But when I was in graduate school, I took the French exam at least five times without passing.  I was frustrated as it was the one thing I lacked to graduate.  In 1959, Lee Alverson became the director of the Exploratory and Gear Research unit in Seattle. When he offered me a job in 1960, I accepted! This was the same man who corrected the spelling in my notebook – I couldn’t believe that he offered me the job.

It’s too bad that I never received an MS degree, but the experience and education that I received during the years at UW were what got me this exceptional job at such a unique time in the industry. The next six years were exciting: dipping into virgin stocks of POP which lived along the top of the continental slope, and the development of the Cobb midwater trawl, which brought in huge catches of Pacific hake in midwater over the continental shelf. Then in 1966 while on the R/V John N. Cobb, mapping out a huge school of hake just outside of where I had spent a sleepless night aboard the R/V Commando, we observed the massive invasion of the Russian fleet that worked up to 3 miles from the coast of Washington and Oregon, systematically removing “our” fish from “our” waters. That year changed the American fishing industry. The Russian fleet had the massive stern trawlers that Lee Alverson talked about when he was a guest speaker when I first came to the College of Fisheries.

In 1970, the Exploratory Fishing branch was abolished when NOAA was formed, and I was transferred with the Cobb to the newly formed NOAA national fleet that was located at the Pacific Marine Center (PMC) on Lake Union. And once again my time at the UW and the close relationship between the College of Fisheries and the US Fisheries, gave me the experience I needed to become part of the industry during this time of great growth and change.

The next 18 years at PMC were interesting since the fleet had two systems of managing the bridge of their ships.  The fisheries vessels were commanded by civilian Master and Mates who remained on the vessel for their entire career, whereas the survey ships were commanded by commissioned officers who were rotated every two years.  I was assigned to the operation center at PMC and worked between these two groups.

During this period I developed a cottage business from my hobby of drawing profiles of ships.  We called it H&H Studios and ran it out of our home.  We developed award plaques featuring my ship drawings mainly of the Coast Guard fleet.  I continued with H&H Studios after I retired from PMC, eventually selling the business in 2006 to a company which retained the name and is still in business.

Since selling H&H Studios, I’ve spent my time collecting the cruise records of the Exploratory Fishing and Gear Research Base in Seattle during its existence between 1950 and 1970.  The Seattle National Archives has accepted them as a special collection and I have volunteered to help organize them before they are opened to the public.  I’m grateful that this body of work will be available to all who wish to understand this amazing time in our Northwest waters.

During my undergraduate years as a zoology student at WSU, I was, at best, a mediocre student.  I left school after the fall semester of my senior year to earn some money and contemplate my educational future. The following spring, I consulted with a wise adviser, who suggested I consider the College of Fisheries at the UW in light of my interest in the aquatic world. I applied to the UW, but was denied admission. The following summer, I visited the College of Fisheries to find out why I was denied admission. I was directed to Al Sparks who reviewed my records and came to the conclusion that I was eligible. UW Admissions had made a substantial mathematical error in calculating my grade point average!

During my year as a UW undergraduate, I took several of Al’s courses as well as other fisheries courses, which I found extremely interesting, resulting in much improved grades. In the spring, Al offered me a research assistant position if I acquired my BS from WSU by transferring my UW credits back to WSU.

After graduating from WSU and enrolling at UW, my first task as a graduate student was to assist Ken Chew in setting up several oyster and mussel field stations to investigate shellfish diseases. I did find getting paid to conduct research while taking numerous interesting classes really stimulated my interest in graduate school. Ken introduced me to the questionable pleasure of consuming Olympic oysters fresh in the field. Although I love most shellfish, I never developed a fondness for raw oysters, although they are not too bad when consumed with a good Scotch.

The research funds disappeared during my last year working on my MS degree. However, I was fortunate to support my graduate studies through several opportunities as a teaching assistant under Ken Chew and several consulting projects for private industry.

During the first year I was working on my doctorate, there was a major oil spill at a refinery near Anacortes. Max Katz was hired as a consultant to investigate the effects on intertidal organisms resulting from reports of major mortalities. Max hired me to design and conduct field investigations of the spill impacts on intertidal invertebrates. He routinely provided field sustenance in the form of cheese, sausage, and six-packs of Miller beer. Fortunately, most of the reported dead snails were simply narcotized and recovered, and we did limit our consumption of beer.

These initial consulting experiences led me into a professional life of consulting long before I understood the role of a consultant. This field has provided me with a wide variety of experience and travel to many areas of our country as well as to other countries, together with the opportunity to meet numerous interesting colleagues. I am now mostly retired from a 45 year corer in consulting.