Sarah and Andrew first met in Loveday Conquest’s QSCI 482 class. Statistics isn’t necessarily known for romance, so it’s not surprising that it wasn’t until the Fisheries Interdiscipinary Network of Students (FINS) transition meeting a couple of months later (Andrew was headed out, Sarah had just signed up) that they realized they liked each other. From that point on, Andy looked forward to class even more than usual (it was an excellent class) and thinks that his continued interest in statistics is a result. 

“How do a Japanese guy and a French girl end up in the US?” This might have been the question we were asked the most when we lived in Seattle. We actually met in grad school in France. Although Kotaro is Japanese, he grew up in Africa going to French schools. He then moved to France for higher education and that’s where we met. 

I grew up expecting to attend the University of Washington as had nearly all of my close relatives (my maternal grandmother graduated in 1909.) I applied to the College of Fisheries at the suggestion of Dixy Lee Ray (high school friend of my mother) and started in fall 1965 with the intent of becoming a marine biologist. The freshman class had over 100 students, of which possibly two were females, and it included SAFS own Charles “Si” Simenstad! 

I almost didn’t make it as a biology major. During my junior year in Ecology and Evolutionary biology at UC San Diego, I realized I wasn’t very good at field work when a couple of graduate students I was volunteering for fired me. Twice. Fortunately I was saved by some ecological modeling classes that I was taking at the time from Mike Gilpin. 

I never thought I would be a student at the age of 39, but there I was in Tom Quinn’s office discussing what classes to take for the fall of 2004 at SAFS. I quickly realized after having met several of my cohorts that I was by far one of the older students if not the oldest. My guess at the time was about 10 to 15 years older than most. 

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. 

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). 

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. 

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. 

When I went to college, my plan was to become a veterinarian. But then I went to the Shoals Marine Laboratory off the coast of Maine between my junior and senior years and my life turned in another direction. I loved the power of the ocean and was curious about the interrelationships of the animals and plants (or should I say fish and phytoplankton).