Featured Scientist

In the Fish family, hunting and fishing is a family affair. Max Fish, right, accompanied by his son and brother, pose for a photo after a successful archery hunt for wild turkey.


Fishing in Alaska, Max and his wife, Carly, show off their catch.


As a father of two young children, Max makes it a priority to take his kids fishing, hunting and into the outdoors every chance he gets. Max and his son, Ryland, and daughter, Ellie, spend time surf fishing in Southern California.
 

There is not a more appropriately named employee anywhere within CDFW than Max Fish. An environmental scientist with the Inland Fisheries Assessment and Monitoring Program, Max is tasked with, well, helping to maximize fish and fishing opportunities within California’s inland lakes and reservoirs. He is based in West Sacramento.

The tools of his trade include the heavy duty, Smith-Root SR18 electrofishing boat he captains, a research vessel that can pump 170 to 1,000 volts of electricity through the water, temporarily stunning fish to the surface in order to survey populations and assess health in the state’s inland waters.

From Kokanee Salmon to crappie and catfish, Max works with more than three dozen inland fish species found in California. He also collects and analyzes all the data submitted by tournament anglers and fishing contests throughout the state.

Born and raised in Palo Alto, Max earned a bachelor’s degree in wildlife and fish conservation biology from UC Davis and joined CDFW shortly after graduating in 2007.

You’ve seen the data from all the big bass tournaments. Where would you send someone interested in catching a really big black bass?

We have several species of black bass in California, which are largemouth, smallmouth, spotted, Alabama and redeye.

My area of expertise is really in northern California. I’d start with any of our central California lakes that have Kokanee Salmon populations. California holds the world record for Alabama Bass out of New Bullards Bar Reservoir (Yuba County). For awhile, it seemed like New Bullards Bar would kick out a new world record bass every season. Right now, the world record fish is sitting at just about 11 ½ pounds.

For Largemouth Bass, we don’t have the world record but we’re close. Of the top 25 largest Largemouth Bass ever caught anywhere in the world, 20 have come from California – all from Southern California lakes. In northern California, it’s hard to beat the quality of large fish in Clear Lake (Lake County) and the California Delta.

Tell us about the special projects you’re involved with.

I work on a program to promote and expand Sacramento Perch. Sacramento Perch are the only species of sunfish native to California. They are the only native sunfish west of the Rockies. They are now extirpated from their native range in California, which was the Delta, but we’ve got them in about 20 lakes where they’ve been translocated.

We’ve been trying to promote the Sacramento Perch on a variety of fronts – for private industry, for private stocking and recreational angling. There are a lot of private landowners who are really interested in native fish, especially native gamefish that are warm-water tolerant. There’s really only one – and that’s the Sacramento Perch. So we’ve been working on that front. We’ve collected all the tissue samples to identify which populations are more genetically robust, more diverse and suitable to create new populations.

Can Sacramento Perch be reintroduced into the Delta or are there too many other predatory fish there now?

The literature shows that predators aren’t as big of a problem as are competitors. Sacramento Perch evolved in California when the main competitors on the valley floor were Pikeminnow and Steelhead. All the introduced sunfish from the Midwest had dozens of competitors they had to compete with so they developed breeding strategies and feeding strategies that are really aggressive.

Sacramento Perch just don’t have that. So when you put them in an environment with a bunch of Green Sunfish or Bluegill or Redear Sunfish, they just seem to get pushed out over the course of a few years. So that’s been, I think, by far the biggest challenge in trying to expand them. All of our surface waters in the Sacramento Valley and the foothills have sunfish in them.

But when you talk to people about Sacramento Perch, they get super excited to hear about a native gamefish that’s warm-water tolerant. You can stock them in a pond and they will do great. They will survive under ice. As far as environmental conditions go, they are super tolerant.

What’s happening with California’s landlocked salmon such as Kokanee and Chinook?

One of the things I’m doing now is a mark and recapture study of Kokanee Salmon. Last year, we began marking fish by clipping the adipose fins of all the Kokanee we stocked into Stampede Reservoir (Sierra County). Stampede Reservoir is our brood stock water for Kokanee Salmon. In lakes like Stampede where there is natural recruitment and a stocking allotment it’s tough to make management decisions when you don’t know what relative contributions either of those make to the fishery. By fin-clipping those fish when we stock them, we can see how many return to spawn or how many show up in anglers’ catches. We can see the relative number of hatchery fish versus natural fish and determine if we are stocking too many, too few and adjust our stocking accordingly. In 2019, we released marked Kokanee into New Melones Reservoir (Calaveras/Tuolumne counties).

If you had free reign and unlimited funding, what scientific project would you most like to undertake?

I’d do two. One is create a Sacramento Perch broodstock facility. Like I said, we have an idea from our genetic work on where to get our broodstock, but there is the question of where to put them. We’d like something on state lands that we can control. A natural pond could function as a production facility as well as a grow-out facility but finding something that doesn’t already have non-native fish and has a secure water source that is not going to go dry is a challenge. A solar-powered well would be perfect. We could dig a pond, put in a well, know that we would have good water – but all of that costs money. We are headed there but it is slow going.

I’d also expand our Kokanee mark and recapture study. Instead of fin-clipping 40,000 Kokanee a year, I would love to do all of the Kokanee we plant – but that’s the expensive part. Collecting the data on the back end isn’t too bad. We use creel surveys of angler-caught fish. At least in Stampede, that’s where we collect our eggs so we are seeing all the fish that come up the river to spawn anyway. Maybe we wouldn’t have to fin-clip all of the fish but at least the ones we stock into lakes with naturally reproducing populations. We could get a lot more data a lot more efficiently.

What advice would you give a young person today thinking about a career in natural resources?

If you haven’t already, read “A Sand County Almanac” by Aldo Leopold. That book had an impact on me and still does to this day. I think it’s a valuable read for anyone going into this field.

What about the book spoke to you?

It’s just the way Aldo Leopold viewed the natural world and the way we as human beings fit into it.

Away from work, where are we most likely to find you?

Usually fishing, hunting, backpacking or otherwise spending time with family. It depends on the season. In the spring, I really enjoy turkey hunting and fishing – stripers in the river, and Kokanee, bass and crappie in lakes. In the fall, I’m deer hunting, duck hunting, crabbing, and fishing for rockfish.

I hunt and fish for food – not out of necessity but because I feel more integrated into the natural world and more connected to the earth. I think it’s a uniquely satisfying experience in our society that’s increasingly disconnected from the earth. It’s what Aldo Leopold wrote a long time ago that holds true today: “There is value in any experience that reminds us of our dependency on the soil, plant, animal, man food chain.”

CDFW Photos. Top Photo: Max Fish captains a CDFW electrofishing boat in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in January to help collect Largemouth Bass for live display at the International Sportsmen’s Exposition in Sacramento in January.

A Sierra Nevada red fox dashes into the wilderness after being caught and released as part of an ongoing CDFW study. CDFW image by Corrie McFarland.


Jennifer Carlson on a Roosevelt elk capture in Humboldt County.

Jennifer Carlson is an environmental scientist with the Wildlife Management Program in CDFW’s Northern Region. Based out of Redding, she is one of two unit biologists covering Shasta and Trinity counties. Her biggest current project is working on Sierra Nevada red fox, a state-threatened species, in the Lassen Peak Region, and she is a member of the long-standing Sierra Nevada Red Fox Working Group. In addition, Jennifer has an elk project waiting in the wings and recently conducted the first helicopter survey in her area to attempt to count the different herds in her unit. Her other responsibilities include responding to human-wildlife conflicts and providing expertise and advice to hunters and the public.

Jennifer received her Bachelor of Science degree in Wildlife Management with a minor in Statistics from Humboldt State University in 1999. She also received her Master of Science in Forestry from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in 2006. She started her career with CDFW in 2005 in the Timber Harvest Review program in the Northern Region. In 2012, she joined the Wildlife Management Program in her current position. When she is not working, she enjoys spending time with her family skiing, camping, hiking, hunting and fishing.

Who or what inspired you to become a scientist?

My family was instrumental in my inspiration to become a wildlife biologist – particularly my dad. He earned his B.S. in Biology and Chemistry and was a self-taught entomologist. He worked for the department in the 1960s as a scientific aid. But at that time it was difficult to get on with the department as a permanent employee, and he never did get hired. Growing up he would take us on nature hikes and quiz us on all the flora and fauna we saw along the way. His own love of the outdoors started with camping and fishing in the central Sierra Nevada with his grandparents (my great-grandparents) when he was a child and it became a family tradition. It became a summer ritual that we carry on today with my own family – a total of four generations!

What is a typical day like for you at work?

As a unit biologist you don’t always know what the day will hold. When one of the aspects of the job is dealing with nuisance wildlife and the public, you could be getting called out to dart a bear that has found its way into town, or a deer that is stuck in a fence. It can include visiting sites to assess property damage caused by a bear, mountain lion, beaver, or bobcat and issuing a depredation permit. In addition to that there are annual wildlife surveys I am responsible for, including deer, band-tailed pigeons, pronghorn antelope, and elk. I also have special projects I work on and am responsible for overseeing, particularly the Sierra Nevada red fox project in the Lassen Peak area. Running a project from start to finish is very time consuming and takes up a lot of my day, especially during the height of the field season. I help out on other projects that my colleagues run, including capturing and collaring deer and elk, fecal DNA projects on deer and elk, and baited camera stations for mid-size carnivores.

What has been the most challenging, and rewarding aspects, of your study of the Sierra Nevada red fox?

We don’t know much about the Sierra Nevada red fox. We think their numbers in the Lassen area may be less than 20 -- we have a minimum population count based on collaring and genetics of 11 individuals currently. Small populations are difficult to study so this one has been a challenge from the start, and it has been compounded by the rugged terrain and conditions that these foxes live in all year-round. With the snowfall we had this past winter, maintaining functional traps has been a challenge, as has keeping our satellite collars working properly. No matter how much we try to alleviate all the obstacles we anticipate, there will always be a level of uncertainty when working on a wild animal in its natural environment that you must accept as a wildlife biologist. But there are great things we have learned from this project that we didn’t know before. For example, we found and documented the first Sierra Nevada red fox den since the early 1900s. We have some amazing video footage of red fox behavior at the den site as well as vocalizations never heard before. We captured, collared and released back into the wild three females and one male red fox. We documented for the first time an inbreeding event where siblings reproduced and had one pup together. We have also learned that these foxes don’t stay at a low elevation throughout the entire winter, as had previously been thought; instead, they will travel back and forth to the higher elevations around Lassen Peak that we thought they only used in the summer.

Tell us about your upcoming elk study.

The goal of the elk study is to estimate abundance, which is difficult with a wide-ranging species that often uses locations that hinder traditional survey methods. To do this, we will capture and collar cow elk in several different herds to learn their movement patterns and apply two different survey techniques to help estimate abundance. The primary technique will be using a helicopter to survey the different herds and count all individuals sighted in each group – both collared and uncollared. Using this data, you can create a “sight ability” model to estimate how elk many you missed and calculate the population size. The other technique would involve extracting DNA from fecal pellets to identify unique individuals and estimate number of individuals in the population. The satellite radio collars will also give us valuable data on habitat use, resource selection, behavior, disease and cause-specific mortality. This will allow the department to develop a long-term elk monitoring program that our recently released Elk Management Plan outlines for the Northern Region. The project will take place primarily in Shasta County (east of Interstate 5) and possibly Trinity County and will hopefully start in the late fall or early winter of this year.

If you had free reign and unlimited funding, what scientific project would you most like to undertake?

It would be hard for me to pick just one project! I would like to help restore a genetically healthy Sierra Nevada red fox population to its historic range. The Sierra Nevada red fox populations that we have left in the state are severely inbred or their genetics have been compromised by other montane (high-elevation) sub-species and/or non-native individuals that have entered the populations. In the last few years we have learned that there are also Sierra Nevada red foxes in the central and southern Cascade mountains of Oregon, although we don’t know the extent or status of that population. I would implement a translocation project that would move individual foxes from their current population into a new one to facilitate “genetic mixing” and increase genetic health. Once we had genetically healthy populations, then I would like to see them reintroduced into areas that they used to occupy, like on and around Mt. Shasta.

I also would like to undertake a massive elk project that was scientifically sound and robust, with an army of people working on it in the Northern Region. With those resources, we should be able to come up with an accurate population size for elk in our region relatively quickly.

What is the best thing about being an environmental scientist?

One of the best things about my job is that I get to be in the outdoors and explore places I never would have been to otherwise. To be able to study one of the rarest mammals in California, the Sierra Nevada red fox, and provide new information on the life history of this elusive canid has been one of the highlights of my career. Flying in a helicopter counting big game species is something I always dreamed about when I was in college and now I am doing it. Some days I have said to myself, I can’t believe I am getting paid to hike on this trail or fly in a helicopter today!

CDFW Photos. Top Photo: Jennifer Carlson cradles a Sierra Nevada red fox that was captured and collared in the Lassen National Forest. CDFW image by Pat Sater.

Travis preparing for an abalone survey dive, Catalina Island. Photo credit Derek Stein, CDFW


Travis working on the California Recreational Fisheries Survey, San Diego. Photo courtesy of Travis Buck


Travis at a CDFW scientific diver recertification training, Catalina Island. Photo credit Colleen Wisniewski


Travis and Scientific Aid Nima Farchadi collecting Pacific Bluefin Tuna biological data, San Diego. Photo credit Erica Mills, CDFW

Travis Buck is an environmental scientist with the CDFW Marine Region’s Highly Migratory Species and Ecosystem Management Project in San Diego. His primary responsibilities include data collection and analysis for highly migratory species and representing CDFW on the Pacific Fishery Management Council’s Ecosystem Workgroup.

A Midwest native, Travis moved to California in 2003 after receiving a degree in Geography with an emphasis in Environmental Studies from Ohio University. He also completed Tropical Marine Ecology graduate level coursework in Florida and the Bahamas.

What led you to a career in marine biology?

I became fascinated with the ocean and the creatures that inhabit it at an early age. I remember my grandfather used to take me fishing in Florida and that was always very exciting. I especially liked the idea that you never knew what was on the end of your line until it surfaced, and so I began identifying fish as a kid on those trips. I was a big fan of aquariums too, and when I got a little older I became really interested in snorkeling, freediving and exploring reefs in Florida and the Bahamas. It seemed to be a more serene, foreign world, and I wanted to live closer to it and understand the life that existed within it.

In school, I also excelled at math and science, so marine biology seemed like a natural fit. I have an aunt who jokes that I told her when I was five years old that I was going to be a marine biologist. She can’t believe I followed through with what I said at such a young age.

What brought you to CDFW? What inspires you to stay?

I began my career with CDFW in 2007 after three years as a contractor working on the California Recreational Fisheries Survey (CRFS). For the first 10 years of my career, I worked for the Marine Region’s Invertebrate Management Project, primarily on research and management of the spiny lobster fishery. I recently transferred to the Marine Region’s Highly Migratory Species and Ecosystem Management Project to expand my knowledge of marine fisheries.

I think the mandate of CDFW is a pretty epic one, to ensure that California’s natural resources are there and are healthy for future generations. I can’t really think of a responsibility more noble than that. When I look back on the almost 15 years I’ve been associated with CDFW, it’s almost impossible to fathom how much I have learned, and also how much of the state I’ve been able to see through being employed here.

What is a typical day at work like for you?

It might be crunching numbers to track Pacific Bluefin Tuna landings (since they are managed with a quota), or it might be assisting scientific aids with dockside sampling questions, or it might be traveling out of state for a Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting, or a plethora of other duties. Issues with natural resources are dynamic and always changing, and so are the assignments at CDFW. I think most environmental scientists working for CDFW will tell you that there’s no such thing as a “typical day,” and that’s another reason that keeps me here, there’s not a lot of repetition of tasks. You’re constantly learning new skills.

What is the best thing about your job?

I love being at the forefront of marine-related research and being “in the know” about major issues affecting the ocean and its fisheries when sometimes the majority of the public aren’t even aware. And it’s not only about the major issues affecting the ocean, but also the cool discoveries. My job provides the opportunity to act as a messenger, to disseminate these cool discoveries, as well as important problems, to a wider audience.

Diving at the Channel Islands over the years for CDFW, particularly the abalone surveys, provided some of the best memories I’ll ever have. Some of the things I saw underwater were so amazing and surreal. For instance, after one survey at Catalina Island, as we were slowly ascending to the boat, it started to rain. A school of barracuda were above us, and we could see raindrops breaking the ocean’s surface right above them while we hung out in the kelp forest for our safety stop. Scenes like that I’ll never forget. And all the people I’ve been able to meet and work with. Wow, it’s kind of mind-blowing looking back at how much information and how many people and places this type of work can expose you to.

What is the accomplishment you’re most proud of?

I’m proud of the work I did to successfully develop and manage the lobster report card program. Before lobster report cards, which gather data and are required for lobster fishing, we had no idea how large the recreational fishery was for lobster, or how much lobster that sector landed each year. Now we have a much better grasp on that information. Also, I’ve enjoyed writing two articles for Outdoor California magazine that detailed CDFW research on abalone and lobster. Writing is a passion of mine.

I’m also proud of becoming a CDFW diver. I passed the entry examination with only the bare minimum number of required dives under my belt. It was very physical, with underwater breath-holding exercises in the ocean that are pretty difficult. I was pumped when I completed those.

What interesting projects are you working on currently?

I’m really interested in the work my project is doing with Pacific Bluefin Tuna. Not only do I track the total landings of this species in California, but we recently began collecting genetic samples of Pacific Bluefin Tuna landed in San Diego, which could give us further insight into the population being targeted by offshore fishing here. Pacific Bluefin Tuna were so heavily fished over the last century by other countries, the population is at a small fraction of its historic levels. There are real efforts being made at the international level to rebuild the population, however. That’s a good thing.

If you had free reign and unlimited funding, what scientific project would you most like to do?

I would organize a giant collaboration to better understand how the combination of warming ocean temperatures, increasing ocean acidification, and increasing hypoxia (like we are seeing take place around the world) will affect all of the commercially and recreationally important marine species off the U.S. West Coast. Humans need to know these things, so we can prepare for a rapidly changing world.

Do you have any advice for people considering careers in science or natural resources?

Work on your math and writing skills! There are a lot of numbers involved, and there is a lot of writing involved. Also, natural resource management actually involves managing people, since we are the ones exploiting the natural resources. So, work on your interpersonal skills – you’ll need them!

Tell us something about yourself that people might be surprised to learn.

I love surfing. I’m obsessed with everything about it! I’m convinced it’s the most beautiful, healthy and rewarding passion there is. I’ve also survived two boat crashes! Honestly, I have. Both were research trips, and neither was the fault of the researchers on board!

CDFW Photos. Top Photo: Travis with a yellowtail, San Clemente Island. Photo courtesy of Travis Buck.