Alaska
Department of
Fish and Game

January - March 2006

Kodiak, Alaska

Worked as a dockside sampler and a crew leader of two technicians. When commercial fishing vessels would come in to offload Tanner crab or Pacific cod, we interviewed the skipper about his trip, collected trip logs and sub-sampled the catch.

Working with commercial fishermen and fish processors is always very interesting, exciting and rewarding. You never know what's going to happen or what stories you get to hear on a day to day basis.

August 2001 - December 2005

Juneau, Alaska

Master's degree in Fisheries at the Juneau Center, School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

Graduate Thesis: Prey selectivity and diet overlap in juvenile pink, chum and sockeye salmon in the Gulf of Alaska and Prince William Sound, Alaska.

Committee: Dr. Lewis Haldorson (Emeritus), Dr. Gordon Kruse, Dr. Nicola Hillgruber

Places visited:
Southeast: Juneau, Sitka, Gustavus, Haines
Southwest: Kenai Peninsula (Homer & Seward), Prince William Sound, Valdez West: Bethel, Quinohak Interior: Anchorage, Fairbanks, Denali National Park
Interior: Anchorage, Fairbanks, Denali National Park

May - November 2005

Dutch Harbor/Unalaska (Aleutian Islands), Alaska

Worked as a field biologist and an IPHC representative, sampling halibut offloads and collecting fishing logs.

21 October - 24 November 2004

Chile, S. America

Fundación Senda Darwin, Estación Biológica Senda Darwin

Assisted in resighting banded chucao tapaculos. Estación Biológica Senda Darwin. Ruta 5 al Cruce el Quilar. Isla Grande de Chiloe, Chile, South America. Volunteered as a field assistant to resight banded chucao tapaculos, Scelorchilus rubecula, an endemic species of birds, in forest patches on the Island of Chiloe. The work was conducted out of Estación Biológica Senda Darwin (Biological Station "Darwin's Trail") by Mary Willson with a total of 3 assistants and a play-back system with a male call recording. Visited:  Santiago, Pucon, Parque Nacional Huerquehue, Isla Grande de Chiloe (Ancud, Caulin, Cocoa, Parque National Chiloe), Puerto Montt, Argentina (Bariloche, Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi), Entre Lagos, Parque Nacional Puyehue, Valdivia, Chillan

Havana, Illinois
Summer 2001

Worked as a fisheries/aquatic ecologist technician. Monitored water quality, fish abundance and composition in the Illinois River and its floodplain. Sampled using electrofishing, seining, trawling and fyke-, hoop- and gill-netting. Learned to identify freshwater juvenile and adult fish of the Illinois River.

Bering Sea, Gulf of Alaska,
Aleutian Islands, Alaska
January - April 2001

Worked as a National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) North Pacific Fisheries Observer under a contract with Saltwater, Inc. Worked independently on commercial fishing boats in the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska, gathering fishing effort and catch information. Identified fish and crab species of the North Pacific, sampled for species composition, collected biological data, monitored for fisheries regulations compliance and transmitted catch massages to the NMFS Observer Program. Seventy three deployment days on 97 to 161-foot trawler and longliners fishing for walleye Pollock, Pacific cod and IFQ sablefish.

Places visited: Anchorage, Acutan, Dutch Harbor/Unalaska.

Tanzania, East Africa
Summer 2000

The Nyanza Project: Undergraduate Training in Tropical Lakes.

Tanzania Fisheries Research Institute. Kigoma, Tanzania, East Africa. Adviser: Dr. Pierre-Denis Plisnier. Royal Museum of Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium.

Interdisciplinary training course in tropical lake studies and research methods with a research component. My project: Vertical distribution and light effect on zooplankton density in relation to economically important pelagic fish of Lake Tanganyika, East Africa.

Places visited: Dar es Salaam, Kigoma, Mwanza, Arusha, Zanzibar, Gombe National Park, Ngorongoro Crater.

Amsterdam
Several days in June 2000

Spent a couple of days exploring Amsterdam while en route to Tanzania. Stayed in a hostel in the red-light district near the main train station.

Israel
2 - 13 January 2000

"The largest college trip in history". The trip was sponsored by Birthright Israel and Hillel. Forty lucky students from my undergraduate university (Stony Brook University) went on a 10-day guided bus tour. Altogether, more than 3,000 students went on this trip from various colleges and universities during this winter break! We visited Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, went on a jeep ride to Golan Heights, visited the northern-most kibbutz in Israel, right on the border with Syria and Lebanon, floated in the Dead Sea and climbed Masada.

Hawaii
Summer 1999

Participated in a Research Experience for Undergraduates program at the School of Ocean and Earth Sciences and Technology , University of Hawaii at Manoa. Sponsored by the National Science Foundation, I spent over two months based out of Oahu, Hawaii studying the impact of introduced red mangroves on local intertidal fauna under Dr. Craig R. Smith (Department of Oceanography). The official project title was: "Megafaunal Assemblages in Introduced Mangroves of the Hawaiian Islands: Invading Aliens?" I organized and led several research field trips on Oahu and Molokai Islands.

In addition to research, I was able travel quite a bit - visited the North Shore of Oahu, two trips to Molokai, spent several days on Kauai, several days hiking at the Volcano National Park of the Big Island.

Islands visited: Molokai, Kauai, The Big Island, Oahu.