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.

Dr. Laura Rogers-Bennett (Photo credit: Dr. Sherry Tamone)


Dr. Laura Rogers-Bennett collecting abalone samples during creel survey at Van Damme State Park, Mendocino County (Photo credit: CDFW photo)


Abalone recovery team scientists working from the southern California research vessel, R/V Garibaldi (Photo credit: Chuck Dobbins, Captain of the R/V Garabaldi)

Dr. Laura Rogers-Bennett is a senior environmental scientist, specialist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s (CDFW) Marine Region. Based in at the Bodega Bay field office at the UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory, her main responsibilities are in Marine Invertebrate Fisheries and Conservation Research.

Laura works primarily in kelp forest ecosystems throughout the state, with a particular focus on abalone populations. She conducts research to inform the restoration of kelp forest ecosystems, including the fisheries they once supported. These include the recreational red abalone fishery in northern California and the restoration of endangered species in southern California. She also contributes to research on Dungeness crab recruitment, sea cucumbers and clam fisheries.

Laura earned her bachelor’s degree in Zoology with a Marine Emphasis at the University of New Hampshire. She went on to earn a master’s degree in Marine Biology at the University of Massachusetts/ Boston and a doctorate in Ecology at the Bodega Marine Lab, University of California, Davis.

In 1999, Laura joined CDFW where she has worked to develop a kelp forest monitoring program that is currently in its 20th year. She was also tasked with drafting the recreational red abalone fishery management plan. In 2009, Laura was awarded CDFW’s Marine Region Frances Clark Award for Excellence in Marine Science. In 2015, she was awarded a Life Membership to the International Abalone Society. And in 2017, Laura was inducted into the Women Divers Hall of Fame in 2017, where she works to expand their scholarship program and support the development of women divers.

What inspired you to become a scientist?

I have loved the ocean and animals since my earliest memories. My mother tells the story of how in kindergarten we had an assignment to draw a boat. My drawing was of a lush kelp forest with stars, snails, urchins and algae and a tiny boat at the very top of the page resting at the surface of the water. My father taught me how to snorkel and free dive. During one summer in Puerto Rico, we went spearfishing together every day for dinner. After that I decided I wanted to become a marine biologist, and I have never looked back.

What is your typical day at work like?

I don’t really have a typical workday. During field workdays, we are up very early and either go out onto the boats to dive and collect data or we go to the coast to interview fishers, measure the catch and collect data. Afterwards when we return to the lab, we are enter and examine the results and data collected in the field. This typically includes  working on computers to graph the data and run statistics to see if there have been significant changes. We draft reports, create presentations and write scientific publications. I now have more than 50 peer-reviewed scientific publications. They can be found on our Marine Invertebrate Survey Project Labs webpage.

What is your favorite species to interact with or study?

I don’t really have a favorite species, although I have grown to love abalone and sea urchins. I would say one of my favorite ecosystems would be kelp forests. The algal canopy when viewed from below looks like a cathedral, and the small beautiful nudibranchs and octopus are so amazing to see. Our kelp forests are in trouble now though due to impacts by multiple climate-related stresses, such as sea star disease, the marine heat wave and the population explosion of purple sea urchins. There is a post on our Marine blog that tells the story of how we are in the midst of The Perfect Storm.

What is it about your work that you find the most interesting?

I enjoy the excitement of research and learning new things. We set up experiments to test important management questions. The science can be very definitive. For example, we never knew that as the water warms, there is a threshold for male red abalone above which sperm production shuts down. Clearly, this has important implications for the productivity of the fishery as it faces warm water events.

I appreciate being able to get out in the field and observe the organisms in their environment, and collecting the data myself. This gives an important perspective for the analysis of the data later. It’s important to understand the nuances in the data when we start thinking about how to translate the science into management and policy. It is a creative process where we think long and hard about what the data are telling us about how to sustainably manage our precious marine resources. I enjoy conducting use-driven science and translating that work into policy and actions.

What is the most rewarding project you’ve worked on for CDFW?

I have had so many, it’s hard to pick just one. I think the first one that comes to mind is the Kelp Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Program. This is really one of the most rewarding projects since I developed this from scratch in 1999. When I came to CDFW we had little information on which to base our red abalone management decisions. We did not have a sense of how the fishery was doing and so we instituted a fishery-independent survey of the population that included abalone competitors and predators, as well as the entire kelp ecosystem. We teamed up with our Law Enforcement Division, and that’s when things really took off. Captains Andy Roberts on the P/V Marlin and Capt. Robert Pucinelli and then Brian Bailie on the P/V Steelhead, along with their team of wardens worked with us to develop the most efficient and safe methods for working on the North Coast. In 2018, our underwater ecosystem surveys covered more than 2.7 football fields. Twenty-seven divers using seven boats dove more than 250 combined hours and counted 215,217 purple sea urchins. We did this in northern California where the ocean conditions are cold and rough, making it very challenging. We have had hundreds of scientific divers and volunteers work on board with us on these platforms supporting the science we need to manage the resources. The most rewarding part for me has been the teamwork we have where everyone is focused on the mission and working together. There are so many other exciting and productive projects, such as the restoration of the critically endangered white abalone, but that will have to be a story for another day.

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

That’s easy: Save the kelp forest! Join us and our partners at the Noyo Science Center as part of the “Help The Kelp” campaign and check out our Kelp Recovery Plan that was drafted in collaboration with the Gulf of the Farallones Association.

It takes a lot of funding and expertise to address this climate change disaster. We need climate smart strategies to help us save the ecosystems and the ecosystem services we all love and depend on, such as fisheries, biodiversity and carbon sequestration. A healthy kelp forest also absorbs excess carbon helping us in so many ways.

There are many large-scale changes to ecosystems that we are seeing occur around the world. The recent mass mortality of corals in the Great Barrier Reef is one example. We just wrote a paper on mass mortalities of abalone from around the world and all the causes of these mortalities. With the more we know, the better we can act to protect these important species that we depend on. Marine heat waves are creating impacts in places around the world, such as off the western coast of Australia in 2011-2012. The loss of the bull kelp forest in northern California is another huge issue. I see it as our responsibility to respond to it. If we can bring people and data together, we can work on fully understanding the problems we are facing and identify innovative solutions.

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

Do what you love. You only get one life to live and so make it count. Don’t let anyone tell you, “you can’t do it.” No one thought I could be a scuba diver except me, and now I’m in the Women Divers Hall of Fame!

CDFW Photos. Top Photo: Dr. Laura Rogers Bennett constructing an underwater abalone recruitment cage to help scientists monitor abalone health and populations at Van Damme State Park, Mendocino County. (Photo credit: Andrew Weltz)

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.