I'm currently a Master's student in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington. I majored in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale and have long been interested in using science as a means to promote and support responsible environmental practices. At UW, I am using genetics to study fisheries populations. Many commercial fish stocks are overexploited, and part of the reason is that their recruitment (offspring production and survival) ecology is not well understood. I plan to use genetics to clarify breeding structure and contribute to the development of sustainable marine harvesting practices.

One topic I'm researching is genetic differentiation between sockeye salmon spawning ecotypes in Little Togiak Lake, Alaska. Sockeye are known for having a strong natal homing instinct, indicating limited gene flow between fish from different spawning sites. At Little Togiak Lake, there are creek and beach spawners that are morphologically distinct and breed in lake tributaries and beaches, respectively. While the two types appear to spawn separately, the spawning sites are sometimes only tens of meters apart. My objective is to find out whether homing is sufficiently accurate to maintain the differences between morphotypes. I spent ten days in the summer of 2003 collecting genetic samples in the field and will perform microsatellite analyses on them during the academic year. If the morphotypes show a genetic distinction, this suggests that sockeye maintain separate breeding populations on a very fine geographic scale. If there is no distinction, the two types probably interbreed to some degree. In either case, the results will provide some useful and fascinating insights into sockeye breeding ecology.