School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

In 1982, I applied for the position of administrative assistant to the director of the UW School of Fisheries. I was interviewed by three people: the administrator, Gary Farris; the interim administrative assistant; and Don Bevan, the director. I remember on my tour of the School (then located at the old Fisheries Building along the Montlake cut) that the tour guide apologized for the rat that scurried in front of us in the basement by the loading dock. She explained that the School’s hatchery was a draw for rodents. My interview with Dr. Bevan lasted no longer than five minutes. I remember telling a friend afterwards that I wasn’t sure if the interview had gone really well or really badly. As it happened, I was their top candidate and was offered the job. After speaking with Gary Farris, I decided to accept the job. It was the best decision I ever made.

I worked with three directors: Donald Bevan, Robert Stickney, and Marsha Landolt. They were all very different personalities, but they all shared a commitment to the School, hard work, and dealing with the politics that came with the position. As their assistant, I was lucky enough to get a bird’s eye view of schemes, dreams, and the plans that came to fruition: to name only a few, the new buildings (FTR and the building the School is now housed in), the establishment of the WRAC, the H. Mason Keeler Endowed Professorship in Sports Fisheries Management and the H. Mason Keeler Endowment for Excellence, and the appointment of numerous outstanding faculty.

My job put me in contact with faculty, affiliate faculty, graduate students, and visitors. I think I must have written minutes equal in volume to “War and Peace” from School of Fisheries faculty meetings and retreats. I also worked with search committees and did the paperwork for appointments and promotion of faculty. In fact, I remember working with André Punt on visa paperwork when he arrived as a research associate in 1992. I enjoyed my interactions with so many of the faculty, and there were some real characters among them. I’d love to go into more detail about that, but it would be too long of a story!

Getting to know the graduate students was an added benefit, and a number of them are still friends today. And last, but not least, I had the pleasure of working with some wonderful hard-working and dedicated staff who helped make the School hum. The staff worked hard, but we had a lot of fun too!

Though my time at the School wasn’t all rainbows, I loved that job more than any other.

In 1996, Marsha Landolt granted me the honor of taking me with her to the Graduate School when she was appointed dean and vice provost. I worked with Marsha until 2004, when she and Bob Busch, her husband, were tragically killed by an avalanche. I worked for three School of Fisheries directors and, unfortunately, planned UW memorial services for two of them.

In 2006, I remarried, and we made a radical decision to relocate to 50 acres on a mountain about 20 miles from Moscow Idaho. Since that time, I have taken up artwork again. (I was an art major in college and I can guarantee you don’t want to try to make a living at it!) It’s been gratifying, and I’ve had some success with sales, acceptance into competitive shows, and even had a painting published on the cover of a national/international magazine.

I wish everyone at the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences all the best as they ready to celebrate its 100th anniversary!

I grew up in England and was fortunate enough to be awarded a six-month internship at the Fisheries Laboratory in Lowestoft while an undergraduate. This was in 1971 when David Cushing was still the Director, and many famous fisheries scientists walked the halls, including Roy Harden Jones and John Pope.  I participated in a juvenile fish survey aboard a small research vessel, which involved sampling along the south coast of England. We tied up in a different port each night and went ashore to sample the local beer. I liked the idea of doing this kind of work for a living!

I arrived in Seattle in December 1972 and began my graduate studies at the College of Fisheries in January 1973. I remember being warmly welcomed by Doug Chapman, who was then Dean, and by Alan DeLacy who was my interim advisor. During my first year, I began work on my MS.  This involved evaluating the effects of water-level fluctuations on the limnology of Banks Lake, which is an electricity storage reservoir close to Grand Coulee Dam. Jerry Stober was my supervisor, and my committee also included Bob Wissmar, Eugene Welch (Civil Engineering), and Ernie Salo. I received my MS degree in 1975, began working with Bruce Miller and Si Simenstad on a study of ichthyoplankton and juvenile fish ecology in northern Puget Sound, and went on to conduct PhD research under Bruce’s supervision, studying the biology and management of Pacific cod in Port Townsend. My PhD committee included Don Gunderson, Steve Mathews, Mark Pederson (Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife), and Tom English. I worked closely with the small fleet that harvested Pacific cod in the study area. I made lifelong friends among these fishermen and learned the essential importance of collaboration with industry that greatly influenced my career.

By the time I received my PhD in 1982, I was married to Susan Guralnick and the father of our first son, Joshua. My second son, Gabriel, was born in 1986. I consider myself very fortunate to have such a close and loving family who supported me throughout my career, even when I was away from home for extended periods of time.

I started work before completing my PhD dissertation (not a recommended approach): first with Tetra Tech, Inc., a large engineering firm engaged in environmental impact studies and then with BioSonics, Inc., a start-up company that was developing state-of-the-art acoustic instruments for estimating fish abundance and tracking individuals and schools. The company was founded by three UW scientists: Tom Carlson (MS, 1974; PhD, 1979), Bill Acker, and Al Wirtz (Electrical Engineering). I slowly learned fisheries acoustics and carried out studies on the Columbia and Mississippi Rivers and in other marine and freshwater systems throughout the US. This field became increasingly important in the 1980s, largely because of groundbreaking work carried out at UW (Fisheries, Electrical Engineering, Advanced Physics Laboratory), in the private sector through BioSonics, and by the US National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) Northwest and Alaska Fisheries Center (NWAFC, later AFSC, Alaska Fisheries Science Center) under the leadership of Jim Traynor (MS, 1973; PhD, 1984) and Marty Nelson (MS, 1966). I was asked to join the NMFS team in 1986, thus beginning my 30-year career with NOAA.

Marty, and later Jim, led the Midwater Assessment Program at AFSC. This was (and still is) a cutting-edge program involved in design and application of advanced hydroacoustic technology to assess pelagic and semi-pelagic fish such as walleye pollock and Pacific hake. During the 1980s and 1990s, the technology advanced rapidly due to developments in acoustic target strength measurement, echo integration, and digital instrumentation. UW was at the forefront of these developments through collaborations with BioSonics, our team at AFSC, and international partners, especially in Norway. We conducted assessment surveys in Alaska and off the West Coast, and worked closely with colleagues worldwide through the Fisheries Acoustics Science and Technology Working Group (WGFAST) of ICES (the International Council for Exploration of the Sea). In 1987, I chaired an ICES International Symposium on Fisheries Acoustics, which was held in Seattle, and I began to attend and present papers at WGFAST meetings and other national and international fora. In August 1991, I began a one-year assignment working at the Institute of Marine Research in Bergen, Norway as part of an international collaboration involving development of digital hydroacoustic systems, and I went on to lead the acoustic assessment program at AFSC following Jim Traynor’s untimely death in 1999.

My career has taken many twists and turns since those early days with AFSC. I led the AFSC’s Observer Program for several years, following in the footsteps of fellow SAFS alumnus Russ Nelson (MS, 1977), and went on to become Deputy Director at AFSC. And for the last five years of my career with NMFS, I served as Science and Research Director at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center. Based in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, we conducted science in support of fisheries management from Cape Hatteras to the Canadian Border, and I had the opportunity to work closely with scientists, industry members, managers, and policymakers regionally and nationally. My early engagement with ICES continued, and I have served as one of the two US Delegates for several years.

Back in Seattle after retiring from NMFS, my career has turned full circle. As a member of the SAFS affiliate faculty, I have a small office on campus, working with faculty and students on a couple of projects and guest lecturing from time to time. And I am enjoying working with André Punt and a distinguished group of colleagues planning the SAFS Centennial celebration.

My career has been rich, diverse, and rewarding. My time at SAFS and the support and encouragement I received during my time as a graduate student prepared me well. But equally important has been the mentoring, friendship, and guidance I have received during the last 40 years. Much of this has come from fellow SAFS graduates such as Gary Stauffer (MS, 1969; PhD, 1973), Don Gunderson (PhD, 1976), Jim Balsiger (PhD, 1974), Jim Traynor, Russ Nelson, Wally Pereyra (MS, 1961; PhD, 1967), Richard Merrick (PhD, 1995), and Bill Fox (PhD, 1972) (to name a few).

The SAFS legacy is rich, and it is exciting to look ahead, to think about challenges facing our community and world, and to be certain that the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences will enjoy a challenging, productive, and influential future.

I started working at SAFS (then the School of Fisheries) in 1979, seeking more stable income than the music profession afforded me. I was hired to do word processing—transcribing hand-written publications to digital files on 5-1/4” floppy disks (huh?!?) on a big, hulking, black machine that would shut down and wipe out the data if I looked at it askance; once, it even caught on fire. That wasn’t the only hazard: one time an intense storm literally blew the window to my office right off its hinges. Less dangerous, but more noxious, were the fumes coming from the basement when the food science crew were conducting their experiments. I remained undeterred by these minor hazards, as I soon came to realize SAFS was a great place to work.

By the mid-1980s, the computer revolution had begun in earnest and my job became obsolete. But multiple times through my more than three decades at SAFS, the administration enabled me to learn new skills and take on new jobs. It even paid for continuing education classes for skills ranging from technical editing to computing systems administration to website development. I am forever grateful for SAFS giving me such opportunities so that I could remain part of such an outstanding program.

Reflecting on my nearly 39 years at the UW, I note several highlights:

In 1979, Fisheries was mainly focused on resource extraction. But gradually, the school’s mission expanded greatly to support the development of sustainable fisheries in the broader context of the environment and society. Inevitably, as the school program evolved, I learned so much from the students, faculty and staff at SAFS: Possibly most important, I came to appreciate how everything in and around us is interconnected. I had read about this in philosophical writings, but SAFS provided demonstrable proof of this phenomenon.

Another very satisfying shift was that of gender balance. When I started at SAFS, it was mostly a man’s club. But over the years, this changed considerably. During the 2000s, women averaged nearly two-thirds of the Master’s students, and about half of the PhD students. This especially matters to me because I watched how my mom—who raised me by herself and graduated as a salutatorian from Hunter College—struggled with pay inequity, chauvinism, and other abusive situations in the workplace. There’s still room for improvement, of course, but the school and UW have “come a long way, baby!”

On a more personal note, SAFS was my second home for more than 32 years. I made so many friends there from all over the world, many with whom I keep in touch to this day. Through the years, SAFS and the UW were always supportive of my pursuit of music. In fact, in the early years, I played at many of the holiday parties, and many SAFS denizens frequented the numerous gigs I played in the area (thank you!). (I stopped playing the parties so I could get in on the great food before the grad students ate it all—often before I finished my first set!)

Another highlight for me was being the editor for a number of books on subjects ranging from the ecology of Pacific Northwest salmon, to riverine restoration, to the history of the school and fisheries at large—some of the most difficult work I did, but so rewarding. I gained substantive knowledge about aquatic ecology by diving deep into the subject matter for these tomes, and I got to know some giants in the field of aquatic sciences.

Thank you, SAFS, and I raise a glass for the next 100 years!

Marcus Duke

Retired but busier than ever

It is a fitting time to write something about my time at SAFS because it has been forty-two years almost to the day since I started working at what was then called the School of Fisheries (hereafter I’ll refer to it as SAFS). I was hired by Charles “Si” Simenstad in October 1977 and started at the Big Beef Creek research station, sorting out and identifying salmon diets and invertebrate samples, part of impact studies of the new Trident submarine base on Hood Canal. This was the ideal job for me because as a youngster I loved collecting and identifying all kinds of little creatures—including zooplankton caught in a net made from my mother’s nylon stockings. I like to tell a story about winning second prize in my sixth-grade science fair with my collection of marine invertebrates in formaldehyde, and that now I’m still pickling invertebrates in formaldehyde 50 years later. I became particularly interested in copepods, which can be both planktonic and benthic, and which are important food for juvenile salmon. The expertise I gained in copepod taxonomy that started in my early years at SAFS has taken me all over the northern hemisphere and as far away as French Polynesia.

After a few years, I moved to main campus into a “lab” on the ground floor of the old Varsity Apartments (long gone, but near where Sea Grant is now). It is the only lab/office I’ve had with shag carpet and my own bathroom. I worked my way up to being manager for our taxonomy lab, dealing with all kinds of invertebrate samples from benthic cores to zooplankton. During this time, we had major projects sampling invertebrates in the Columbia River estuary, a place where I have worked off-and-on throughout my career. Moving on-campus gave me the opportunities to learn from other staff, graduate students, and faculty researchers, and to get my thoughts together about what I wanted to do. In the early 1980s, I went to graduate school at SAFS, continuing my staff position as lab manager at the same time. After receiving my MS (1986), I stayed on at SAFS.

From the 1990s onwards, I have continued to both broaden and refine my scientific skills and to develop my own research projects. My favorite projects include: conducting plankton surveys every four years (since 1992) in west coast estuaries to document non-indigenous zooplankton; working long-term with the Smithsonian Institution to investigate patterns of invasive invertebrates along both coasts of the United States; evaluating floodplain and estuary restoration efforts throughout the region using invertebrate communities as indicators; conducting a 10-year study of non-indigenous organisms being discharged from ship’s ballast into Puget Sound; and working with various agencies on long-term studies of the biology and ecology of the lower Columbia River. Most recently, I have been fortunate to work locally, first monitoring the function of restored wetlands within Seattle’s industrialized Duwamish Waterway, and second developing and implementing fish-friendly habitat that has been incorporated into Seattle’s new seawall. The latter project has gained national and international notoriety. I am a native Seattleite and it is great to be able to give something back to my home region.

SAFS gave me the opportunity to have a non-traditional career in an academic setting. As a non-faculty researcher, I would guess that there aren’t too many places that would have allowed me to stretch out intellectually and go on to lead my own research and to mentor and support graduate students. Finally, I would like to mention how important to me my relationships with faculty, colleagues, and students have been over the years. Those I have worked with at SAFS have all been of the highest caliber, both intellectually and personally, and I have learned something from each and every one of them.

I was fortunate to be in elementary school when the Soviets sent up the Sputnik satellite in October, 1957. This galvanized the United States government, in addition to ramping up the US space program, to launch a variety of “new math” programs for students, including female students, a rather bold move in those days. Female students who were identified as having mathematical abilities were encouraged to pursue mathematics and other STEM fields, even without the legal backing of Title IX (which did not come into being until the 1970s). I was one of the lucky ones. At Pomona College (Claremont CA), of the 30 math majors, three of us were women. Although there were no female math faculty, many of the math professors considered us almost as daughters, determined that “our girls” (to them, we were always girls) would be admitted to graduate school in whichever fields we wished to pursue. Thus, I ended up at Stanford University to complete an MS in mathematical statistics. I then entered the UW to pursue a PhD in biostatistics through the former Department of Preventive Medicine, today the School of Public Health. (An interesting side note is that Vince Gallucci graded part of my written PhD qualifying exam when I was a grad student. Vince wasn’t sure if my answer showed a full grasp of the true meaning of “randomness”!)

I began my academic career in 1975 at the University of Hawaii’s Manoa campus in the School of Public Health. Being from the Islands, I felt that if I didn’t give this opportunity at UH a try, I would always wonder if I should have. In those days, communicating with places on the mainland (especially DC, 5-6 hours’ time difference) was difficult without email. Phone calls and faxes were expensive. Attending a statistics conference on the mainland was difficult and attending a European conference meant traveling halfway around the globe. And the cost of living in Honolulu was quite high.

I was informed of a temporary vacancy in the UW’s School of Business; my mainland colleagues suggested that I could use Seattle as a “jumping-off base” from which to do a further job search. I expected to be in Seattle for exactly one year. Then came a phone call from Doug Chapman encouraging me to apply for an upcoming faculty post in the then School of Fisheries, teaching courses in probability and statistics through the Center for Quantitative Science in Forestry, Fisheries, and Wildlife (CQS), and doing quantitative research in natural resource management (NRM) areas. I went through the interview process, gave a seminar on the Behrens-Fisher Problem (George Brown told me years later that he specifically attended my seminar to see if I could indeed convey statistical ideas to a biologist), and received an offer to start in September 1978. At first, I wasn’t exactly sure how I could integrate myself as a statistical scientist into NRM problems, but as we all now know, there are so many quantitative issues arising in NRM, that it was not difficult to find colleagues in both Fisheries and Forestry who were eager for my collaboration. I spent many years working with Frieda Taub on her Standardized Aquatic Microcosms project (students would recognize numerous “SAM”-based examples in my class lectures). A multi-year quantitative fisheries project funded by the US Agency for International Development took me, Vince Gallucci, students, and staff to the University of Costa Rica and to the marine lab in Bolinao, Philippines. After David Ford (Forestry) arrived in 1985, the Quantitative Ecology and Resource Management (QERM) program emerged out of what had previously been the quantitative NRM arm of the old biomathematics program. I was in at the start of the Center for Streamside Studies (CSS), when Bob Naiman was hired as director, and worked with students from Fisheries, Forestry, and QERM through CSS over many years. A final major project for me was funded by the NSF in the area of marine sciences education. Graduate students from various areas in what would become the College of the Environment, and the College of Arts and Sciences, were paired up with high school environmental science teachers from two locations, Seattle (an urban school district) and the San Juan Islands (a rural school district). The teachers gained from having graduate student researchers working in their classrooms, bringing current research to high school students. The graduate students gained from being compelled to present their own research and other science topics to an audience not consisting of their peers, valuable training for anyone.

In the early 1990s, I became associate dean of the former College of Ocean and Fishery Sciences (COFS, and served with two deans, Ross Heath and Arthur Nowell. During those years, there was much necessary engagement with the community and the Jensen Boat Company as the UW negotiated to build new buildings in what is now called Southwest Campus. I also worked with various student and faculty groups underrepresented in COFS and the UW in general, which has led to my being involved with the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES). I served as inaugural director of the UW Teaching Academy, followed by a stint as associate director of SAFS. And somewhere in there, I also directed the QERM program for about fifteen years following David Ford’s tenure.

In retirement, I have found myself answering the occasional call from Undergraduate Student Services in Mary Gates Hall when they need faculty members for various “Career Day” experiences with students. A recent Career Day saw the UW bus in 5th grade students from Neah Bay to the Seattle campus. Students were able to visit various parts of campus and to speak with current and former faculty (particularly women and faculty of color) about careers. I still attend the annual AISES conference, where it is inspiring to see hundreds of Native American, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian students presenting their STEM research and being recruited by companies such as Boeing and Intel for jobs and internships.

Retirement has also brought the call to serve on various boards and committees dealing with education, the arts, literature, Children’s Hospital (I model in vintage fashion shows, which raise funds for uncompensated care), and the downtown Women’s University Club, which emphasizes continuing education. Thus, I find myself frequently in planning meetings for various classes or speaker topics, and needing to find instructors, available rooms, and audiovisual equipment—not unlike tasks I used to do at the UW. (A major task can be reserving a parking place for the instructor!) And I now treat myself to participating in short courses in the UK at Oxford or Cambridge, where one lives in the dorms and experiences the best part of college life (although the chefs have admitted that we paying guests are treated to a higher class of food). So I get to go back into the classroom, this time as a student, with homework (lots of readings), but no tests nor grades—the best way to be in school at this time of my life.

My experience at SAFS in the 1990s was nothing short of magical. I returned to UW when my livelihood in Alaska—commercial fishing for halibut and sablefish—came under threat due to overcapitalization and severely reduced fishing seasons. I needed to diversify my talents and expand my capabilities by completing a bachelor’s degree.

I was an outlier and an older student. I was a veteran of Alaska longline fishing, as well as an experienced fisheries advocate. I remember smiling when I listened to my profs lecture: Ted Pietsch, Tom Quinn, David Armstrong, Ray Hilborn, Loveday Conquest, Don Gunderson et al.—I got to learn from the best in the field.

As an undergraduate, I contributed to the School by guest lecturing in Kane Hall to several hundred students in FISH 101, primarily arts and humanities majors, who knew FISH 101 as a “fun” science requirement class. I also presented to the School of Marine Affairs (now, School of Marine and Environmental Affairs) regarding fisheries “limited-entry” management, a dynamic and highly charged political issue in Alaska at the time.

I became part of the SAFS network. Julia Parrish and Ed Melvin asked me to review their research proposal concerning seabird bycatch mitigation. This opportunity morphed into a voyage onboard my fishing vessel—the QUEST—where Julia and Ed established protocols for a large study that tested seabird deterrent devices. I am very happy to have been associated with this project, which led to regulations requiring the use of mitigation devices in the North Pacific longline fisheries.

If I had to pick my highlight at SAFS, it wouldn’t be my MS project, proving or disproving whether a so-called “Dirty-Dozen” group of trawlers existed in the Alaska fleet… (results “disproved” the moniker). Rather, the all-time highlight began during an undergraduate lecture by Tom Quinn, when he offered a nebulous project to his entire Fish Ecology class— studying fish migration in the Columbia River. No takers then; however, some time later when Tom advised me on how to tick off all the boxes and complete my degree, he said I should consider doing this project, and as a tradeoff, petition to omit a couple of required courses regarding fishing gear technology and world fisheries issues. I pondered for a moment and took him up on his offer. I am so thrilled that I did… it evolved into a 1996 paper in the journal Ecology with Tom and me as authors. It is a wonderful and oft-cited paper concerning global warming affecting the migratory timing of anadromous fish.

Finally, and directly related to my experience at SAFS, is my confidence in academic discipline, without which I would have never been able to take on the enormous project of writing a book— “Four Thousand Hooks,” published by UW Press in 2012. Tom and Ray Hilborn are in the book’s acknowledgements.

I am so very grateful to have been part of UW SAFS.

“Having recently moved, we sometimes find ourselves asking ‘how did we end up living in Madrid?’ The answer lies in part in our professional and personal experiences gained at SAFS.”

“While at SAFS, I studied salmon hatchery/wild interactions and growth through the lens of quantitative genetics with Kerry Naish”, says Erin. “I was also a teaching assistant for the Conservation Genetics class for several years, which had a considerable impact on my continued interest in science education.”

Nathan was at SAFS as a post-doctoral fellow from 2006 to 2008. He arrived at SAFS from Vancouver, Canada where he had studied growth and survival responses to a series of experimental fishing trials in remote British Columbia lakes. “While at SAFS, I modelled growth and survival response in Pacific salmon populations with Ray Hilborn and Nate Mantua using multi-area, multi-stock salmon models” he says.

“We met in the rich social and intellectual environment at SAFS and stayed together even as we moved to different jobs in different cities after leaving SAFS.” For Erin, this included teaching biology, chemistry and environmental science at Lakeside School in Seattle for a brief time. For Nathan, it meant taking another post-doctoral fellowship to work on Atlantic bluefin tuna at the University of British Columbia in 2008. “In 2010, we decided it was time to live in the same city and accepted jobs working for Fisheries and Oceans Canada at the Pacific Biological Station (PBS) in Nanaimo BC.”

“As a Visiting Fellow at PBS, I studied evolution in the sockeye major histocompatibility complex and worked on a project examining the effects of ocean acidification on shellfish using genomics” say Erin. “Following my postdoc, I went on to work as the director of a small, non-profit in Nanaimo focused on offering hands-on science activities for kids aged 3-12.” In his initial position at PBS, Nathan applied some of the fish stock assessment skills honed at SAFS to Pacific herring and Pacific hake; for both fisheries he continued to collaborate with SAFS colleagues.

“Our daughter was born in 2013 and was soon indoctrinated into the joys of fisheries science! The day she came home (at age 4) to tell us about the spawning habits of plainfin midshipmen – which she had learned while out with her grandmother from a group doing a beach survey – is one of our favorite stories.”

“The allure of working on tuna stock assessment was too much for me to resist” according to Nathan, and in the summer of 2018 he accepted a job working at the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, in Madrid. “While far away from our home base, we continue to cultivate our Pacific Northwest connections even as we find our footing in this new space.”

“SAFS was a place where we learned our scientific disciplines and it was also where we established professional and personal relationships. Even though Madrid is far away in space and time from SAFS, both the knowledge and the relationships we cultivated there endure.”

Pam and Greg came to SAFS via two very different routes that converged on crabs. Pam grew up in Nevada and was a biology major at the University of Nevada Reno, with little idea of what she wanted to study in graduate school. Then, in an upper-level invertebrate biology class, the instructor had live marine invertebrates flown in. She was hooked and started looking for schools with marine programs. Greg grew up in Bremerton and was hooked on marine biology at a very young age, exploring local tidepools and learning to scuba dive as soon as he was old enough to take the class.

Pam moved to Washington and volunteered in Robert Paine’s zoology laboratory until deciding to apply to SAFS for graduate school. Shortly after talking with Dave Armstrong about working on crustaceans, the Exxon Valdez ran aground and funding from Exxon for king crab studies became available. A year later, the lawyers struck—all research, including student theses, was to remain under wraps until all lawsuits were settled! Fortunately, Dave convinced Exxon to provide funding to study the reproductive cycle of female Dungeness crab, and Pam did much of her work at the NOAA Mukilteo seawater facility. During her first dissection of a crab, she discovered a new reproductive organ involved with sperm storage, which led to an expansion of her thesis and ultimately to the PhD program. The questions of paternity raised by the discovery of this organ required a molecular biology approach. Fortunately, around that time SAFS hired Paul Bentzen, and what was to become the Marine Molecular Biotechnology Lab (MMBL)—the combined molecular lab of Paul, and Ginger Armbrust and Gabrielle Rocap (both UW Oceanography)—began to form. Pam completed her dissertation with Paul while also serving as the manager of MMBL, preparing her very well for a position at the AFSC in Frank Morado (MS, 1982; PhD, 1993) ’s lab to bring a molecular component to his pathobiology research group.

After completing his undergraduate degree in the UW’s Zoology department, Greg did seasonal work for NOAA and the International Pacific Halibut Commission. He then worked full time in Dave Armstrong’s “crab lab” on a Pribilof Island king crab study and started graduate school when that funding ended. His doctoral work addressed questions of porcelain crab distribution that had puzzled him since his childhood beach explorations, supporting the unfunded work with TA positions and consulting, and serving as the chief diver/collector for Pam’s project. He taught the shellfish class for many years, and now serves as the Capstone Coordinator for SAFS. In his spare time, he has authored several books on the marine life of the west coast.

There is a strong network of capable scientists at AFSC, many of whom graduated from SAFS. When Pam started at AFSC, she recognized about a third of the names on the office doors as SAFS graduates. Pam, together with fellow MMBLers Mike Canino (PhD, 2003), Rolf Ream (PhD, 2002), Bobette Dickerson (PhD, 2003), and Ingrid Spies (MS, 2002; PhD QERM, 2014), created a molecular group at AFSC. The skills she learned at SAFS and the people she met continue to aid her every day in her career.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

An excerpt from Sea Fever, a poem by John Masefield.

It’s a well-kept secret that Willapa Bay is the most romantic spot in the western hemisphere. That’s because true love could only bloom between the aptly named points of interest, Cape Disappointment and Grayland. Willapa Bay is the kind of place where hip boots count as formal wear and oysters (a well-known aphrodisiac) outnumber people 1,000 to 1. Thus, it is probably no surprise that Sean and Kirstin came together while doing fieldwork on those titillating tide flats. Throw in some sun-warmed mackerel, thousands of ornery crabs, acres and acres of up-to-your-chest mud, and a leaking (sinking?) Lund, and you’ve got the recipe for amoré. These may not seem like the most obvious ingredients, but apparently they are the best ones.

Although Willapa Bay may have sealed the deal, it all started back at the turn of the century at the University of Washington. Kirstin and Sean affectionately remember boxes of data on punch cards and tape reels, clanking pipes, and TGIT in the brick behemoth down the road we now call, “Old Fish.” They met in Lobo Orensanz’s (PhD, 1989) crustacean fisheries course. And whether it was discussions of protandric hermaphroditism in pandalid shrimp (hubba hubba) or dinners and guitar serenades with Jan and, their advisor, David Armstrong, the flame was kindled. The rest, as the saying goes, is history. They’ve been together as long as SAFS has been SAFS, and before iPhones, reality TV, or even Twitter, which is of course Sean’s other love.

Despite growing up less than 50 miles from each other (and the University of Washington), they followed different trajectories to eventually arrive at the SAFS nexus. Sean began his journey knowing from an early age that he would be a marine biologist, and then bobbing and weaving his way through aquarium docent gigs, internships, and eventually a stint at Shannon Point Marine Center in Anacortes. That’s where he met Greg Jensen (PhD, 1999) and became acquainted with the wonderful world of carcinology. From there it was a short trip to graduate school and a pursuit of the vicious, voracious, cat-eating (probably), world-ending (possibly) European green crab for his PhD.

Kirstin’s path was no less direct, but perhaps less obvious. Raised in the cradle of Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands, her life was defined from an early age by the sea. However, when asked she sometimes says that her career, and life as she now knows it, really began with a jellyfish; it was Ted Pietsch who helped Kirstin identify the critter she’d seen during a sailing trip back to Seattle from Hilo. He encouraged her to take his ichthyology course, and from there she was hooked (pun intended), and subsequently switched from pre-Med to the Fisheries major. She went on to a summer course with the Alaska Salmon Program, where she met David Armstrong during a snorkel survey in Iliamna, and decided to pursue a PhD, with his guidance, studying Dungeness crab.

Life after graduate school was a whirlwind of adventures, post-docs, and research. Eventually Sean found a home teaching in the UW Program on the Environment and continues his work on shellfisheries, aquaculture, and invasive species in SAFS. Kirstin landed at NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center, where she focuses on the impacts of climate change and other factors on North Pacific fisheries and ecosystems. Along the way, Sean and Kirstin have been mentored and surrounded by amazingly talented friends and colleagues who, more often than not, have strong ties to SAFS.

Sean and Kirstin are now a fairly prototypical Seattleite family raising an amazing 8-year-old aspiring aeronautical engineer/artist/sailor/chicken-expert daughter. They feel truly blessed to have found an academic home in SAFS, and know their experience there provided far more than a professional foundation; it was the start of life-long friendships as well.