Sitka School Board President Chamber Luncheon 2015-02-25

I graduated with a B.S. in Fishery Biology from Colorado State University in 1986. While at CSU, I was involved with the student chapter of the American Fisheries Society and became an avid rugby player. It was as a freshman in college when I first came to Alaska in the summer of 1981 as a volunteer for the US Forest Service on the Seward Ranger District. After my first summer in Seward, I knew Alaska would be my home. During my undergraduate career I worked for six seasons as a fisheries technician on the Seward Ranger District and spent one winter as a foreign fisheries observer on Japanese and Polish trawlers in the Bering Sea. That same year I spent one semester at the University of Edinburgh, in Edinburgh, Scotland studying fisheries in that part of the world.

I attended graduate school at the University of Vermont (UVM) and pursued a Masters degree in Fisheries and Wildlife where I studied the winter smelt fishery on Lake Champlain. It was at UVM that I met my wife Litia who was a graduate student in the zoology department. In 1988 I was fortunate to be hired by NSRAA (the Northern SE Regional Aquaculture Association) to fill a new fishery biologist position in Haines, Alaska. My wife and I arrived in Haines on Christmas day in 1988. We thrived in Haines and began our family there. We continue to have a strong attachment to that Southeast community. We moved to Salida, Colorado in 1994 where we purchased and operated a feed and farm supply store with my family. However, we missed Alaska far too much and returned in 1996 when I was hired by Douglas Island Pink and Chum (DIPAC) as the hatchery biologist at the remote Snettisham Sockeye Hatchery 40 miles SE of Juneau. In 1998 I took the position as Hatchery Manager at the Port Armstrong Hatchery on the southern end of Baranof Island until 2001 when we moved to Sitka and I returned to work for NSRAA. Since my return to NSRAA I have worked as a field projects biologist, managed the Hidden Falls Hatchery, the Medvejie Hatchery and am now the Operations Manager . My wife Litia currently works for SEARHC in the women’s health program. We have two wonderful and talented daughters at Sitka High School, Meghan and Maggie. My daughters were home schooled until we moved to Sitka in 2001, and both have thrived and excelled in the Sitka school system.