School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

The first time I visited the SAFS, it was a misty and slightly cold Friday morning in November of 2001. I had flown in to meet with André Punt, a new research professor, about the possibility of becoming a graduate student in his lab. I was finishing up an MS degree at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in the Monterey Bay area of California, where Novembers were a bit milder and less cloudy than this introduction to Seattle. But hailing from sunny southern California and having spent my undergraduate years at the usually rainless University of California at Berkeley, I always longed for rainy days and happily greeted the gray and the mist.

I entered the new-ish SAFS building that looked like a cannery straight from Steinbeck’s days (making me feel right at home) and walked up the central staircase. The concrete and metal with tall, bright windows was clean, open, and welcoming. My meeting with André was not for another hour, so I headed into room 203, just beyond a large room full of computers (their hum and artificial heat would bathe me for years to come). FSH 203 is a room I became ultra familiar with in time: classes, seminars, workshops, meetings, defenses, and special occasions all used FSH 203, as did my own PhD defense seven years later to the month of this visit. I entered the room and was immediately greeted by Carolina Minte-Vera (PhD, 2004) and introduced to the Quantitative Seminar, a long-running Friday seminar series hosted by SAFS graduate students (of which I become coordinator in the 2004–2005 school year).

What I particularly remember that day was meeting several international SAFS graduate students at the seminar and getting the strong sense that there was something very special about this institution. I then talked with André—at that time a South African-born Australian citizen living in the United States—about the work in his new and expanding laboratory. I would soon thereafter meet André’s first graduate student working on his MS, Gavin Fay (MS, 2004; PhD, 2012) from Sheffield, England. He and I would share an office together until September 2007, when I started working at the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center (NWFSC), a place that remains my professional home. And Gavin remains a close and dear friend.

Throughout my six years at SAFS, I got to know many wonderful and talented people from all around the world. From graduate students to visiting scientists, American and international scientists exchanged ideas, wrote papers together, and supported each other through challenging moments, becoming both colleagues and friends. I was able to witness so many people, whether from the United States or elsewhere, take their education from SAFS and transfer that knowledge to places far from the Seattle campus. And while my office is still based in the beautiful Emerald City, I have had the wonderful opportunity at the NWFSC to teach, work, and build technical capacity in fisheries science on six continents (still working on Antarctica), in addition to hosting visiting scientists and policy makers from numerous foreign institutions. While domestic stock assessment and fisheries management issues are our primary responsibilities at the NWFSC, fisheries science is a global activity and outreach is democratic. I spend a large amount of research effort in this worldwide arena. In my professional endeavors abroad I repeatedly encounter SAFS graduates doing impressive and important work.

My view of the long SAFS tradition is that it is intrinsically diverse, transferable, and broadly applicable. It is cross-disciplinary and fundamentally cosmopolitan. The inclusive nature of the student body is a heritage that encourages innovative thoughts, novel actions and broad reach, and is notably one of SAFS’s greatest strengths and important legacies. May the next 100 years continue to bring scientists from all corners of our world, from varied backgrounds and cultures, unified in the profession of asking questions and seeking answers that boundlessly advance and redefine how to do fisheries science while unifying generations to come that perceive no borders.

As a California native (mum’s the word!), I came to SAFS to study aquatic toxicology in 1983. I had knocked off an MS at San Diego State University and was lucky enough to complete a BS at Humboldt State. Prior to coming to SAFS, I was a marine biologist at the Naval Ocean Systems Center in San Diego and a deep-sea ecologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, where I met my wife (Susan Picquelle) a NOAA statistician (Southwest Fisheries Science Center and Alaska Fisheries Science Center). Susan retired after 31 years to pursue her passion, garden design.

I was happy in San Diego and had no plans to pursue another degree, but Gary Stauffer (SAFS alumnus [PhD, 1973] at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center) was persuasive and convinced me to apply to UW.  Over the years, there was considerable movement of fisheries folks up and down the west coast, so we had a welcoming circle of friends after arriving. Originally, I was planning to work with George Brown, but was fortunate to land in Frieda Taub’s lab and plug-in to her ongoing work on ecosystems in a jar (Standardized Aquatic Microcosms). This was cutting-edge research to study ecological processes in perturbed systems under a variety of conditions by evaluating the responses observed for a suite of algal and invertebrate species. Each experiment comprised multiple doses, with replication, generating a massive amount of data. Frieda’s research team consisted of several SAFS faculty members, including Tom Sibley, Loveday Conquest, and Gordie Swartzman, who were also instrumental in my education.  My time in Frieda’s lab was a fantastic learning experience, providing infusions of chemistry, statistics, modeling, toxicology, and of course, fisheries science that solidified the foundation for my career.

After graduating, I didn’t stray far from campus (about 400 m as the fish swims). I started working at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center (NWFSC) in 1989 as an NRC postdoc with Usha Varanasi and was offered a full-time position in 1990. Working at the NWFSC has been a blast, most of the time, where I am an environmental toxicologist studying a variety of contaminants and their effects on critters ranging from worms to whales. Currently, I am trying to figure out the importance of pharmaceuticals and related chemicals in causing adverse effects to physiological function in juvenile Chinook salmon. Somewhat unexpectedly, this recent research has attracted the attention of myriad newspapers, magazines, and radio shows, including a skit by Stephen Colbert (just Google “Sammy the Salmon Colbert”). Needless to say, people get a bit agitated when they hear about fish on drugs. My other area of study concerns the effects of oil on Arctic fish with colleagues in Tromsø, Norway. When I am not slaving away at the computer or the lab, you can find me on a bicycle, taking pictures of cool fish in the Caribbean, or keeping our garden green.

SAFS provided a variety of skills, knowledge, and connections, allowing me to be successful in my chosen field. After seeing how things are done at a number of universities, I can appreciate the world-class education I received at the SAFS. As an affiliate professor in the UW Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences (School of Public Health), I am able to give back to the university and hopefully inspire younger minds to tackle the challenging environmental issues we face.

I was an MS student at SAFS from 2003–2007 and returned in 2014–2016 for a post-doc, both in Tim Essington’s lab. It goes without saying that the technical training I got from SAFS was of extremely high quality and prepared me for a career as a fisheries scientist at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center (NWFSC), where I am now. But, there were three intangible gifts SAFS gave me that I wasn’t expecting: entry into an elite club of respected fisheries scientists, an incredible set of colleagues, and life-long friendships.

After I finished my MS at SAFS, I went to Colorado State for a PhD in Ecology. When I was interviewing for that position in 2008, I was struck by the immediate level of respect with which I was treated because of my MS degree. Not one faculty member that I interviewed with questioned my skills or my ability to take on the funded fellowship I was applying for. It was a given that I could do it because I had been through SAFS. I’ve had similar experiences around the country and around the world—a SAFS graduate degree confers status.

I returned to Seattle and to fisheries science after my PhD and have discovered many of my school friends from SAFS are now colleagues. I remember Tim saying in one Essington lab meeting how fun it was for him to have his grad school buddies as collaborators. At the time, I had a hard time envisioning that would happen, but a decade later I led a NCEAS working group with three of my Essington labmates (Anne Beaudreau [PhD, 2009], Mary Hunsicker [PhD, 2009], and Jordan Watson [MS, 2007]) and another former SAFS grad student colleague, whom I happen to have married (Eric Ward [PhD, 2006]).  Returning to SAFS as a post-doc, I got to collaborate with a new generation of super sharp and productive Essington lab students (Megsie Siple [PhD, 2017], Christine Stawitz [PhD, 2017], Laura Koehn [PhD, current], Pam Moriarty [PhD, 2018], Kiva Oken [PhD, 2016, QERM], Emma Hodgson [PhD, 2017]). And now, at NWFSC, there are more SAFS alumni than I can count, and more than half of the staff in my program are SAFS grads I overlapped with during my MS and postdoc (e.g., Jason Cope [PhD, 2009], Melissa Haltuch [PhD, 2008], Ian Taylor [PhD, 2008, QERM], Chantel Wetzel [BS, 2007; MS, 2011; PhD, 2016]).

Besides a well-respected degree and a professional network, SAFS gave me an amazing and supportive group of friends. I’d like to think there was something special about SAFS from 2003 to 2007. I formed quick and lasting bonds with many SAFS grad students (including my now husband). We struggled through homework together, went hiking and skiing together, got jobs near and far, and now are raising families (e.g., Kristi Straus [PhD, 2010], Donna Hauser [BS, 2002; MS, 2006; PhD, 2016], Peter Westley [BS, 2004; MS, 2007], Joe Anderson [MS, 2006], Keith Denton [MS, 2008], Bridget Ferris [PhD, 2011], Chris Kenaley [PhD, 2010]).  I’m particularly grateful to my female SAFS friends, who navigated similar transitions from graduate student to post-doc to permanent positions, and could identify with my experiences as a woman in science, balancing work and life and spouses and parents and kids at different times and sometimes all at the same time. These friendships go beyond fisheries, but they began at SAFS.  My holiday card mailing list seems to grow every year, but there are still at least as many SAFS-family as people I share actual DNA with on that list.

I am extremely grateful for the tangible and intangible benefits of my time at SAFS. And as the school moves into a second century, I hope I’m able to give back to the current and future generations of the SAFS community even a fraction of what it’s given me.

As a native of the Olympic Peninsula, I grew up thinking everyone had access to fresh oysters in the half shell, spotted shrimp straight from the bay, and mountain peaks minutes from their house. Every day I did something outside that involved animals, mostly feeding domestic ones and harvesting wild ones. Sometimes, my sister and I would ask our teachers for extra-credit assignments so we would be too busy to feed the horses and cows; schoolwork was the only excuse that would work on our mom. The choice to go to college was simple. If I was in school or working on the farm, my parents would foot the bill for my horse addiction and going to school seemed easier than working on the farm. The harder choice was deciding what I wanted to go to school for. I knew it had to involve animals and the outdoors, but I did not want to be a farmer and I did not think I was smart enough to be a veterinarian. Consequently, I thought my options were being a zookeeper or game warden.

While attending the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, I quickly found that I loved biology. I particularly enjoyed learning about population dynamics because I could relate it to the hunting and fishing regulations I grew up attempting to skirt around. The classes were hard at first because I did not take biology in high school, but I enjoyed it so much that I did not mind the challenge. More importantly, I learned that biologists could work outside. Eventually, I landed an internship, and then a job, at Cascadia Research Collective, a non-profit marine mammal research group in Olympia. Soon, I learned that I needed more quantitative skills to analyze the data we were collecting.

Upon finishing my MS in resource and environmental management at Simon Fraser University under Andrew Cooper (PhD QERM, 2000), I still felt I needed more skills. I set my sights on SAFS. I believed UW was the best university for teaching quantitative skills in an applied sense, and it was within a commutable distance from my family. Immediately, I gained a profound amount of respect for André Punt’s ability to teach quantitative concepts to people without mathematical backgrounds and for the approachability of the SAFS faculty in general. Initially, I found it difficult to ask for help from other students, but the benefits were immediate and substantial once I found the courage. By my second year, I was learning more from working on side projects with my peers than attending organized classes. Soon everyone was trying to teach me how to say “No” to new projects (AEP: she never really managed to learn that).

Graduate school can be rough, but I honestly feel that even if I do not do anything related to my PhD ever again, attending SAFS was worth it. Many communities operate similarly to Ricky Bobby’s philosophy that “if you ain’t first, you’re last.” Fortunately, SAFS does not. Instead, SAFS thrives through the sum of its parts. Once I accepted that everyone there—past, present, and future—knew more than me about something, I began to grow as a researcher. The collective knowledge of the SAFS community is like a never-ending resource. SAFS taught me how to learn; you ask around, you pick up a book, you ask around again. I am genuinely excited that now as a biologist at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center I still feel like I am a part of the SAFS community. Maybe one day, I too can lure a graduate student away from their dissertation to work on a side project that helps them learn how to learn.