School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

“Um, Bob, so…have you ever wanted to be a minister?” So went the request one sunny afternoon at the Volunteer Park wading pool, while we were sitting with Bob Francis (professor emeritus) as he watched his grandson. A few months later, Bob officiated our wedding, sprinkling the ceremony and our path forward with his salt-of-the-earth gruff charm. To say SAFS students ask a lot from their major professors was probably an understatement at that point. To say that SAFS is a core part of the arc of our personal and professional stories is not.

Sure, students and faculty land at SAFS because of the world-class science, but the SAFS community provides so much more. (And we’re not just talking about free drinks and munchies at TGIT here). In the early-to-mid 2000s, a crew of us would unwind by playing “pickup” soccer back behind the Intermural Activities (IMA) Building. SAFSers have always been quick to balance the brain spinning we do indoors with stretching of legs outdoors. In our case, while we worked down the hall from each other, our research didn’t bring us together – Jodie modeling large-scale fisheries (Major: Prof. Bob Francis; Secondary/ Interdisciplinary and Policy Dimensions of the Earth Sciences: Prof. Ed Miles), and Jason immersed in small-scale juvenile salmon restoration (Profs. Si Simenstad, David Armstrong). But, once on the soccer field, our shared love of questionably good humor and a lackluster approach to competitive sports drew team Toft together.

Fast forward over a decade. Now our kids are the ones playing soccer as we coach from the sidelines. As is common for SAFS offspring, we, too, seem to be raising saltwater aficionados – from bivalve and crab harvesting, to boating and beach exploring, the Pacific Northwest makes it easy.

Workwise, after a wonderful chunk of time at The Natural Capital Project, Jodie is now a marine scientist at The Nature Conservancy, where she applies her SAFS training to conservation. Continuing as a senior research scientist at SAFS, Jason researches the effects of urbanization and restoration opportunities along estuarine shorelines. Our work worlds collide a bit more now, which leads to good, meaty discussions about oceans, coasts, conservation, and hopes for the future. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

For both of us, SAFS was and is a special place for learning – about science, fish, the natural world, quantitative techniques, the list goes on. And for us and so many others at SAFS, that learning and the people with whom we shared our SAFS experiences serve as a cornerstone in life. Simply put, start at SAFS for the science, but stay for the scientists. You never know what may turn out!

Jennifer and Mark came to SAFS by different routes.

Jennifer was born and raised in Bremerton, WA. She was fortunate to spend a lot of time sailing and SCUBA diving with her family and friends in Puget Sound. Much to her parents’ consternation, however, Jennifer spent her first year of college in Kenya, which offered her a rare opportunity to spend many months traveling around much of eastern and southern Africa. She then returned home and enrolled at UW where she completed a BS in Forestry. Jennifer then worked as a dive master in Hawaii and then Honduras, where she had the unfortunate experience of weathering a direct hit by Hurricane Mitch.

Mark was raised along the shores of the Mississippi River in central Minnesota and spent a lot of time in the water during the summer and on the ice during the winter. His family was very active and spent a lot of time outdoors exploring the western Great Lakes region. Mark obtained a BS in Zoology from the other UW (in Madison, WI), and it was during his time there that he met his future PhD advisor and current SAFS faculty member, Daniel Schindler. In the interim, Mark earned an MS in Fishery and Aquatic Science from Cornell University and worked as a wildlife biologist in central Florida.

Their paths to SAFS began in the late 1990s, only a few blocks to the east of SAFS in what was then the Department of Zoology. Jennifer was a technician in Tommy Edmondson’s lab, conducting limnological research on Lake Washington, and Mark was a PhD student there. After a year or so of mixing socially with a group of academic friends, Jennifer captured Mark’s romantic interest at a cocktail party when she procured the world’s worst martini. Indeed, it got much better from there.

Four years later they were happily married, and a bit more than a year after that, Jennifer was defending her MS thesis at SAFS while five months pregnant with their first child. Jennifer’s advisory committee comprised of Dan Schindler, Dave Beauchamp, and Tom Quinn. Her research focused on the foraging behavior of juvenile sockeye salmon, and the key role that Daphnia play in their diet choices. After finishing graduate school, Jennifer had transitioned from the Lake Washington project into a position with the Alaska Salmon Program (ASP), where she was tasked with organizing their historical data into a comprehensive database.

Since leaving SAFS in 2007, Jennifer has been the principal at her consulting company, Sound Data Management, based in Seattle. As a testament to today’s digital culture and global workforce, three of Jennifer’s employees live in Australia. Admittedly, it can be a bit odd sometimes when she ends her day by asking people how tomorrow is going. For the past decade her team has been contracted by the California Public Utilities Commission to design and maintain large data systems, which allow the Commission to review and evaluate their $1 billion per year investment in energy efficiency. Jennifer also continues to work on smaller data management projects with various people at SAFS.

Mark finished his PhD in 2002 after completing much of his dissertation research with the ASP in southwest Alaska, studying sockeye salmon and the stream and lake ecosystems where they spawn and rear (Tom Quinn was also on his advisory committee). Mark then transitioned to a post-doc position with Ray Hilborn, where he began developing life cycle models for at-risk populations of Chinook salmon in Puget Sound, and that work continues today throughout Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.

In 2003, Mark began a full-time position at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center, where he currently works as a quantitative ecologist. His research involves a large network of collaborators from across the US and Canada. Since 2007, he has also been an affiliate faculty member at SAFS. Mark enjoys co-teaching a graduate course at SAFS in time series analysis, wherein he gets to witness firsthand the amazing students and the interesting projects that they complete as part of the course requirements.

Jennifer and Mark both consider themselves extremely fortunate to have been welcomed so warmly into the SAFS community. Over the years, the faculty, staff, and students have all been wonderful friends, colleagues, and invaluable sources of information. As they raise their children and enjoy spending time with their extended family in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, the rich experiences they’ve had through SAFS always stay with them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All in the (marine science) family

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love at First Fish

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

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

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

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

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

In 1980, I became the second woman to earn a PhD in fisheries at the UW.  My program focused on water pollution ecology, emphasizing impacts of toxic chemicals on aquatic biota. I want to thank my dissertation committee, especially the late Dr. George Brown, who was the chair and a wonderful mentor, and Dr. Frieda Taub, who was also a wonderful mentor and an inspirational role model. I continue to keep in touch with Dr. Taub.

Although I had a supportive committee and congenial colleagues in Dr. Brown’s lab, I felt isolated as one of the few women at the then College of Fisheries (now SAFS). The atmosphere for women was chilly and unwelcoming. I felt pressured to continually prove myself and to always be “perfect” so that doors would not close for women who came after me. Mentors, friends, the Association for Women in Science, and my determination kept me going. I am happy that there is now good gender balance among graduate students at SAFS and that there are more female faculty than in the 1970s. I hope that the number of female faculty will continue to rise.

After earning my PhD, I was drawn to environmental problem-solving and embarked on a satisfying 25-year environmental agency career. As a fish biologist for the Washington Department of Fisheries (now Fish and Wildlife), I was especially proud of contributing to preventing the Northern Tier Pipeline Company from constructing an oil pipeline that would have crossed every major salmon-bearing river and stream in Washington  state. The oil spill risks were huge. Other rewarding projects were leading an interagency team in developing and implementing an action plan to control pollution sources and clean up contaminated sites in Sinclair and Dyes Inlets for Washington Department of Ecology, and managing salmon habitat restoration and improvement projects for King County.

In 2004, my career and life took an unexpected turn when my husband and I had the opportunity to teach at Northwest University in Xi’an, China. I created and taught a course about the impacts of urban environmental pollution. In addition to having a fabulous cultural experience, I discovered that I love teaching. After returning to Seattle, I sought regional teaching opportunities that included “Biology, History and Politics of Salmon in the Pacific Northwest” at UW Tacoma and “Impacts of Metals on Aquatic Ecosystems and Human Health” at the University of British Columbia. In 2007, I resigned from my agency job to focus on teaching. The results have been positive and exciting! I am having a wonderful time bringing my work experience and knowledge to the classroom, educating current and future environmental scientists and environmentally aware global citizens. My academic homes are Western Washington University on the Peninsulas and The Evergreen State College Tacoma campus. I also teach courses and give lectures for environmental professionals and the general public about water quality and the impacts of toxic chemicals, especially metals and endocrine disruptor chemicals, on aquatic biota and human health.

I recently presented at a Gordon Research Conference on Endocrine Disruptor Chemicals, which took place in Switzerland. My poster, titled “EDuCation about Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals: Bridging the Gap between Scientists and the General Public,” encouraged colleagues to do similar teaching and outreach on this important topic.

My graduate education at SAFS prepared me well for my environmental agency and teaching careers. Congratulations to SAFS on its 100th anniversary, and best wishes for the next 100 years!

As the School approaches its centennial year (2019), we have been telling the stories of many of the important figures in SAFS’s development and evolution: deans, directors, faculty, and students. In fact, there have been many long-standing staff members who have played significant roles in helping SAFS become a major academic and research institution. Tom Oswold Jr. is one such long-term staff member. He joined SAFS as a transfer student in 1948 and stayed on as a staff member until 1993, when he retired. Tom was born and raised on a farm near Bellingham, but was associated with the Alaska fishery through his father, who worked summers on the canneries in Bristol Bay. Tom began working in Alaska at age 14 and was skippering a fishing boat before he finished high school.  That experience peaked his interest and led him to join the UW School of Fisheries (SOF) in his sophomore year.

Because of the skills he had acquired in Alaska, shortly after he came to SOF, he began skippering the R/V Onchoryncus, a 50-foot surplus Naval personnel carrier converted by the UW into a stern trawler. Because the Onchoryncus was limited to short runs in local waters, it quickly became clear that marine research and class operations needed a vessel with greater capabilities. In 1950, the School became the College of Fisheries and acquired the R/V Commando, a 67-foot halibut boat with a deep hull that was capable of extended runs in the open ocean. Running the Commando meant Tom had to hire an engineer, take on charter work for other research organizations, and finally give up on the idea of finishing his degree.

For the next thirty years, Tom took fisheries students and scientists out on Lake Washington, Puget Sound, and the Pacific Coast from Monterey, California, to the Aleutians to catch, count, and tag or dissect fish of multiple species and habitats. His job was to provide a research platform for hundreds of studies and projects undertaken—not only by the School, but also by the Alaska, Oregon, and Federal Fish and Game Departments. The success of many of these projects was predicated on Tom’s ability to find and catch the target species or thoroughly sample the targeted area or habitat to obtain an accurate survey.

Tom took a one-year leave of absence from the School in 1962 to join the United Nations World Health Organization’s Food and Agriculture Department. His project was to bring more modern fishing technology to local fishers on the small island of St. Kitts in the Leeward Islands of the West Indies. At the time, the local fishers were using hand lines from small sailing skiffs to catch grouper and other fish for personal consumption and local sale. He spent the year designing and refitting a small motor boat to use trawl and trolling gear and most important, providing a local fishery with the potential to greatly increase its yield and efficiency.

In 1980, the School retired the Commando when it acquired the R/V Alaska. Tom skippered the Alaska until his retirement in 1993. For almost his entire tenure, Tom was joined by Olaf Rockness (1918–2005), his engineer and deckhand. The two served the School for almost their entire professional careers and witnessed the evolution of the School from its days of focusing on support of the fishing industry to its concentration on environmental and sustainability issues.

Tom was an integral, though perhaps less visible, part of nearly half of the one hundred years we are now celebrating.

Tom passed away on April 18, 2018. His ashes were scattered off the Oceanography dock where he spent so much of his life.

I originally came to UW as an undergraduate and received a BS degree in Oceanography. I then worked in the Oceanography Department for several years, participating on oceanographic expeditions in Puget Sound, the tropical Pacific, and the Arctic and Antarctic regions. When I

decided to go back to school, I enrolled in the School of Fisheries to obtain a better background in quantitative science, population dynamics, and animal behavior. My advisor was Bob Francis, and Tom Quinn served on my supervisory committee. Bob had a great group of students at that time. In the small world category, it turned out that another student, Ric Brodeur (PhD, 1990) had married someone I knew from junior high school in Connecticut! I was not Bob’s typical student. I worked full time in Oceanography and went to school part time. I had National Science Foundation (NSF) funding for a project in the Southern Ocean, which formed the basis for my MS thesis. I investigated the role of sea ice ecosystem dynamics on the distribution and behavior of Antarctic krill, Euphausia superba, which, while not a fish, is a commercially important crustacean. I finished my MS degree in 1990 and then went to the University of Tennessee to work with a group of polar oceanographers. I received my PhD in 1995 in Ecology, with a research focus on Arctic sea ice ecosystems.

After a post-doctoral fellowship at the Department of Energy, I worked at the NSF as a program director in Biological Oceanography for four years. It was a terrific experience that I highly recommend. I then accepted a faculty position at the University of South Florida in 2001. About that time, I became involved in the planning and development of NSF’s Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). Observing systems provide a continual presence in the oceans to capture episodic events and long-term trends of environmental data. I went on to spend much of the next 17 years working on this project, including a stint as director. The OOI is now successfully deployed and has a variety of moorings and sensors located along the Washington and Oregon coasts, including a fiber optic cable stretching across the Juan de Fuca plate to Axial Volcano. These data are freely available to anyone on the OOI website and can be used to assess environmental conditions for commercial and recreational fisheries. In addition to working on the OOI and in polar systems, I have investigated the impacts of oxygen minimum zones on marine ecosystems in the tropical Pacific and participated in both the IXTOC-I and Deepwater Horizon oil spill response efforts.

Despite my broad interests, my fisheries background has not gone to waste. I was involved in the Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics (GLOBEC) and Comparative Analysis of Marine Ecosystems Organization (CAMEO) programs, which had strong fisheries components. I have had students work on aspects of blue crab and stone crab fisheries in Florida. The statistics courses I took at UW were essential to my career. My favorite course was Tom Quinn’s fish behaviour class. Our class project was to pick an animal at the Seattle aquarium and quantify the amount of time it spent on various activities. I chose a reef fish, which opened my eyes to the complexity of behaviors exhibited by fish. This was a valuable lesson and later changed how I have viewed Antarctic krill, which are very adaptable, with very plastic behaviors, and still confound researchers’ expectations today. Thanks to Bob Francis and Tom Quinn for your help and support!

It all started on a warm morning in the summer on the beach in my home country of Brazil when I was about 10 years old. I went for a walk with my father and three brothers when we came across a dead dolphin. It was a franciscana (scientifically known as Pontoporia blainvillei), one of the smallest cetaceans, and a species endemic to the western South Atlantic Ocean. It had been drowned accidentally in a gillnet — a worldwide problem that is taking many marine species, including the franciscana, to the brink of extinction. I had always liked marine animals, but at that time, still at an early age, I decided I wanted to pursue a career that would lead me to help with the conservation of marine life. Little did I know that my choice would eventually bring me to Seattle, and to have the privilege of being part of the SAFS family!

I got my college degree and an MS in Zoology in Brazil, but wanted to study abroad for my PhD. I had always been interested in studying in the US. Generally speaking, when it comes to marine biology, the research done at UW is of the highest standard in the world. Also, if I wanted to pursue a career in marine science, I would need to improve my spoken and written English skills. Coming to a country where this was the native language seemed like the right thing to do.

My story with SAFS (at that time still called the School of Fisheries) started in 1998. After my MS, I was looking for a PhD in quantitative applied research. I needed to develop analytical expertise that could be used to inform management and conservation. A close friend and co-worker, Dr. Artur Andriolo was a visiting scientist at the NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AFSC) in Seattle, connected me with Dr. Doug DeMaster, at the time the leader of Cetacean Ecology and Assessment Program at NOAA’s Marine Mammal Laboratory. While Doug and I shared similar research interests, he could not take me on as a PhD student. However, he pointed to SAFS Professor Glenn VanBlaricom (also assistant leader of the Washington Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit), who encouraged me to submit an application to the School’s graduate program. I had to act quickly to obtain scores on the TOEFL and GRE tests required by SAFS and to put together an application for a PhD scholarship with the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), the Brazilian equivalent of the US National Science Foundation. It was hard work, but the effort paid off! I was thrilled to learn, in early 1999, that I was accepted into the SAFS PhD program and was awarded a scholarship from the government of Brazil.

It was challenging at the start: a new country, new culture, new language, etc. However, SAFS made me feel very welcome. It is a very international community, with students coming from many continents. Also, the faculty and staff foster a sense of community that encourages a large contingent of foreigners to fit in. On top of that, colleagues in the VanBlaricom Lab and the Coop Unit were amazingly supportive and made me feel at home.

At SAFS, I learned the true meaning of quantitative research and was exposed to new (at least new to me) computer programing languages. I attended some of the most impressive courses and very much enjoyed the statistics (QSCI 480, 482, 483, 486) and stock assessment classes (FSH 456, 458 and 558). My research focused on population assessment methods for cetaceans, with emphasis on abundance estimation. I was only able to achieve my goals thanks to the thoughtful guidance I received from my PhD committee (Doug DeMaster, Jeff Laake [AFSC-NOAA], Glenn, Paul Wade [AFSC-NOAA], and Judy Zeh [UW-Statistics]), the great synergy between the SAFS faculty and the staff at the NOAA’s Marine Mammal Laboratory, and the support from colleagues and friends in the Francis, Gallucci, Hilborn, Punt and, of course, the VanBlaricom labs.

In addition to providing an exceptional academic environment, the SAFS program is an avenue to “real world” science. It provides an opportunity for students to focus their research towards addressing real management questions because many of the SAFS faculty are involved in organizations responsible for the conservation and management of aquatic resources at the regional, national, and international levels. While at SAFS, I became involved with the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission (IWC SC). The IWC is the world’s leading inter-governmental organization focused on cetacean management, and decisions made at the Commission shape the conservation of cetaceans worldwide. I value the opportunity given to me while at SAFS, and I continue to work with the IWC today, more than 15 years after I graduated. In fact, I recently had the honor to be nominated as the vice-chair of the IWC SC.

I currently work as a research scientist at NOAA’s Marine Mammal Laboratory and with two non-profit organizations in Washington—Cascadia Research Collective and Marine Ecology and Telemetry Research. My work focuses on cetacean population biology and conservation. I feel fortunate to interact with many outstanding people in these organizations, some of whom are SAFS alumni (e.g., Charlotte Boyd [PhD, 2012], Michelle Lander [PhD, 2008], Josh London [PhD, 2006], Tony Orr [PhD, 2002], Jeremy Sterling [PhD, 2009]). In addition to the IWC SC, I also serve on advisory committees such as the International Union for Conservation of Nature Cetacean Specialist Group and the World Wildlife Fund Advisory Group on River Dolphins. I feel my contributions to these committees have been greatly enhanced by the strong scientific background I received as a SAFS graduate student.

The SAFS research and academic program has no parallel. I feel privileged to have spent some of my best years at UW and for the many friends I made there. I miss those years. Congratulations to the School for celebrating its centennial and for the outstanding SAFS community for making it happen.