Featured Scientist

Don Baldwin surveys rainbow trout at the headwaters of a small coastal stream in San Luis Obispo County. These wild trout serve as a seed population for coastal steelhead as some of their progeny may migrate out to the ocean.


Don conducts a snorkel survey on San Luis Obispo Creek.


Before he began monitoring steelhead in San Luis Obispo County, Don worked as a steelhead biologist in the Central Valley.


Don takes a summer hike to the summit of Mount Lassen to ski off the top.


A passionate backcountry skier, Don tours the Sierra through Yosemite National Park.

Don successfully completed CDFW’s Heritage Trout Challenge by catching six different native California trout in their historic range.

Don Baldwin is an environmental scientist with CDFWs Central Region based in San Luis Obispo. A 12-year CDFW employee, Don oversees the California Coastal Monitoring Program in the area and is tasked with surveying and assessing South Central California Coast steelhead, a threatened species listed under the federal Endangered Species Act. Steelhead are the anadromous population of rainbow trout that spend time in both the ocean and freshwater.

Born and raised in Sacramento, Don developed a love of trout and steelhead while growing up fishing the American River and small trout streams in the Sierra. His passion for steelhead in particular has influenced his education and career choices ever since. He holds a wildlife management degree from Humboldt State University – a school he chose in no small part due to its proximity to so many great north coast steelhead rivers.

When you think about some of the hallowed steelhead regions and waters of California, San Luis Obispo is not exactly top of the list. Can you explain the work you are doing there?

We are trying to get a grasp of what the wild steelhead population is in San Luis Obispo County. Since 2017, I have been implementing the California Coastal Monitoring Program there, which is part of our statewide responsibilities to monitor and recover these listed coastal salmon and steelhead populations under state and federal endangered species laws.
There are a lot of small, coastal streams in the county – approximately 25 plus their tributaries – and a lot of those are spring-fed with good, cold water with lots of wild rainbow trout in them. But not much research has been done so nobody really knows the population status of steelhead in the county.
Right now, I am looking for adult steelhead in the two priority coastal streams there – San Luis Obispo Creek and Santa Rosa Creek, the latter of which is in Cambria. We do that two ways: surveying for redds (fish nests) and using DIDSON sonar cameras to count the adults migrating upstream to spawn. We then build a mathematical relationship to estimate the number of adult steelhead for each redd we see. I am still in the preliminary stages of this monitoring program and have a way to go until we finalize our entire sample frame.

Are you finding many fish?

We did some redd surveys last year and we did find some redds, but never saw any adults while conducting spawner surveys. We’re still processing all the DIDSON data and have seen a few adult steelhead. I’m extremely optimistic we will see more. The last few years have been tough on steelhead in central and Southern California because of the drought, but they are a very resilient species. They have gone through this before. They’ve been around for thousands of years. They may have experienced droughts that have lasted 10, 20 years, but they keep coming back. So it’s exciting to be part of this project and monitoring these fish, yet it is challenging because they are so elusive and difficult to monitor. Hopefully, with these good rain events we are having this year, producing good flows, we will start seeing more fish.
What’s really special about this species is that there is this residence component of rainbow trout up in the headwaters of these streams that serves as a sort of seed bank for the anadromous component. They’ll just hang out and keep reproducing over the years and once the time is right, some of the juveniles may go out to the ocean.

Steelhead fishing opened on many coastal streams in December and January. Where would you direct steelhead anglers in San Luis Obispo County?

Go to the Eel River (in Humboldt County) (laughs). The streams in San Luis Obispo County are very small, some only a couple of miles long. Those that are open to fishing are open only in very small stretches on select days. You really need to read and understand the local fishing regulations. Many streams run through private property with no public access. There are just not a whole lot of fishing opportunities nor are there many fish.
To really immerse yourself in steelhead fishing and culture, go to the Eel River or Smith River (Del Norte County) and hire a guide with a drift boat. That’s how you have a chance to hook into a large chrome bright steelhead.

Can you explain the fascination with steelhead to somebody who’s never fished for them?

As a rainbow trout that goes to the ocean, they just get so much bigger, more powerful and strong. They are very elusive. You rarely see them. They return to freshwater, spawn, and then they are gone. Fishing for steelhead is like chasing ghosts, you always want to see what’s around the next corner.
They’re an absolutely beautiful fish. They fight hard and they’re exciting to catch. The appeal is the chase. When I first started steelhead fishing, I would go out for days and months and never catch anything. But I kept going back. I always heard it takes 300 hours of fishing before you start hooking them. And that’s pretty much it.

Anything surprising ever show up in these streams you are monitoring?

In San Luis Obispo County, we only have one species of salmonid: steelhead. We don’t have Chinook or coho salmon down there. The cool thing is that we have Pacific lamprey. Recently, that’s been the southernmost extent of their range. However, for about 10 years, we didn’t see any lamprey in San Luis Obispo Creek. They were nonexistent.
Down by the estuary there’s a saltwater intrusion weir with a fish ladder that wasn’t functioning well. A couple of years ago a “lamp ramp” was installed on the weir – which is a lamprey passage ramp made from a piece of curved sheet metal. Lamprey can’t scale a 90-degree angle as they use their mouths to suction-cup their way upstream over wetted obstacles. Ever since the lamp ramp was installed, we’re seeing adult lamprey, lamprey redds and a lot offspring once again in San Luis Obispo Creek.

Are lamprey a type of eel?

No. They look like an eel but don’t have paired fins or jaws like an eel. They are a completely different species. We don’t have freshwater eels on the West Coast. They have those on the East Coast. Adult lamprey have a round, sucker-like mouth and are parasitic when in the marine environment. They attach and feed on marine fish, including salmon and steelhead in the ocean.
Lamprey are a remarkably interesting species. They are an anadromous species like steelhead and salmon. They come into freshwater and hunker down in the gravel for a year without feeding. They absorb all their nutrients into developing their gonads and then come out a year later, dig a redd, spawn and die. They produce thousands of young that will live in the gravel for up to six, seven years. And they’re filter feeders, so they are aerating the stream bed and cleaning the water. Once they get to the size of about a pencil, they will migrate out to the ocean, grow up, and return one to three years later to spawn.

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

I would be doing exactly what I’m doing right now and just really build a huge monitoring program. It really takes an army to do it well. You really must have multiple crews to go out and collect field data. You need a crew processing sonar data. You need a lot of equipment and sampling gear, especially when we start monitoring juvenile steelhead in the future. It takes a lot of people, equipment and money. Right now, it’s just me and a couple Watershed Stewards Program (WSP) members a day or two a week trying to do everything. So I would love to have free reign and staff and money to really monitor steelhead throughout San Luis Obispo County so we could really understand and tell their story and put this program on the map.

Tell us something about yourself many people would be surprised to learn.

I’m a ski bum. My true passion is backcountry skiing in the high Sierra and southern Cascade mountains. I started skiing when I was 5 and spent a lot of time in the mountains growing up. I don’t ski as much as I’d like to these days, but I still get out there a few times a year.

CDFW Photos. Top Photo: An avid fly fisherman, Don shows off a coastal cutthroat trout he caught in northern California before releasing it.

Fishing for night smelt from the beach in Pacifica.


Fishing for night smelt from the beach in Pacifica.


Ken Oda holds a soupfin shark caught while capturing California halibut for a hooking mortality study.


Ken Oda piloting the research vessel Triakis on San Francisco Bay while doing Pacific herring surveys.  

Ken Oda is an environmental scientist with CDFW’s Marine Region and a member of the Northern and Central California Finfish Research and Management Project. Based out of the Monterey office, Ken is also the lead person for sandy beach surfperch research and management.

Where did you grow up?

I was born and raised in Monterey. My great-grandfather operated a sardine cannery on Cannery Row, and my grandfather ran a wholesale fish business on Wharf 1 in Monterey, specializing in local abalone.

What led you to a career in marine biology?

It’s genetics. My mom’s family was in the commercial fishing industry. My dad was an avid fisherman and diver. I became fishing-obsessed at a young age and wanted to learn everything I could find about fish. Given my strong interest in fish and all things fishing, my parents “suggested” that I choose a career path consistent with my fish fascination.

After searching for colleges offering fisheries degrees, I decided that Humboldt State University could offer me the best education. I graduated from Humboldt State with a Bachelor of Science degree in fisheries, with a mariculture emphasis.

In 1982, my mom went to the annual open house at the CDFW’s Granite Canyon Mariculture Laboratory in Big Sur. She had a conversation with the director, Earl Ebert, who invited me to do my senior thesis at the lab as a volunteer student intern. My job entailed taking care of juvenile Red Abalone. Later, my first paying position was as a scientific aid sampling sport and commercial rockfish landings from Monterey to Santa Cruz. I worked as a fisheries technician on groundfish for the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission. By 1988, I began my first permanent position as an entry level marine biologist. Later I promoted to marine biologist conducting population assessments on San Francisco Bay herring. In 2005, I transferred back to Monterey, which eventually landed me on my current project.

What inspires you?

The learning opportunities. I remember reading vintage issues of CDFW journals and informational publications, e.g., ocean fishing maps and fish identification books, and thought that I’d want to do that kind of work someday. I had the privilege to meet and work with ichthyologists Dan Miller, Dan Gotshall and Bob Lea, who authored the publications that I had read.

I’m also inspired by the fact that I’m working on surfperch fisheries that my family have been active participants in since the 1910s.

What is a typical day like for you at work?

The best thing about my job is having daily opportunities to learn something new while in the field, interacting with others or through data analysis.

I’m doing more writing than fieldwork these days, but on those days when I can get out of the office, I head to a local beach to collect surfperch. To do so, I gather up my fly and/or conventional rods and reels, a tackle bag/soft cooler, electronic thermometer, and a smart phone for taking photos and storing data in the field. If successful, I’ll bring the fish back to the lab and collect life history information from them: lengths, weights, sex, maturity, and ear bones (otoliths) used for age determination and input the data into a spreadsheet.

When I’m not in the field, I check and respond to emails and phone calls, and search for publications to support the reports that I’m writing.

What interesting projects are you working on currently?

Writing “Enhanced Status Reports” (ESRs) as part of the implementation of the 2018 Marine Life Management Act Master Plan for Fisheries. The ESRs describe the individual species or species groups, habitat, research and management, and the state-managed fisheries that they support.

What accomplishment are you most proud of?

I was the project lead person that coordinated the purchasing process for building a custom research boat for the Pacific Herring Project. This was the first for the Marine Region in many years. The process from the funding proposal to delivery of the boat took about three years. It took a team of CDFW staff, consultations with commercial fishermen, boat builders and naval architects and engineers to pull it together and deliver a boat that is still in service after 20 years.

Over the course of your career, was there a discovery or an incident that surprised you?

During the 1997 El Niño storms when levees in the Delta broke and caused widespread flooding, it was not unusual to see random items drifting around in San Francisco Bay while doing surveys — a travel trailer, dead cattle, snakes, a refrigerator.

What are the best – and most challenging – things about being a fish and wildlife scientist?

I appreciate feeling “dialed in” with the fish species through field work and seeing fish in the flesh. Fish and fishermen are more than numbers in a table or points in a graph and observations sometimes can’t be captured on paper or camera.

The most challenging aspect is presenting information that you know won’t be popular to a group of people and trying to remember that you’ve done your best despite their reactions.

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

A statewide quantitative survey of surf species using fishing rod castable armored cameras and a fleet of four-wheeled ATVs.

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

Fishing somewhere — on a tropical flat, a coastal river for steelhead, or the Delta for striped bass. I’m happy fishing anywhere for just about anything.

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

I played competitive volleyball, which resulted in two surgeries and broken fingers.

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

Realize that it’s a very competitive field these days for jobs, prepare accordingly, take opportunities to meet those working in the field that have taken similar career paths and volunteer to determine if a job/career is what you really want. Keep an open mind — we never know it all.

CDFW Photos courtesy of Ken Oda. Top Photo: Ken Oda at work collecting surfperch in his Sandy Beach Surfperch Research and Management project.

Erin loads evidence samples onto the Applied Biosystems 3500xl Genetic Analyzer in order to visualize their DNA profiles.


Erin and her husband, Jeff Rodzen, a fisheries geneticist for CDFW, have two children, 4-year-old Ryan and 9-month-old Reagan.


Erin and her husband, Jeff Rodzen, a fisheries geneticist for CDFW, have two children, 4-year-old Ryan and 9-month-old Reagan.


Erin competes in dressage aboard her horse Grande.

Erin Meredith is a senior wildlife forensic specialist. With 18 years at CDFW’s Wildlife Forensics Laboratory (WFL), Erin is the senior member of the four-person scientific team that conducts DNA analysis, species identification and other evidence processing to support CDFW’s criminal cases and protect California’s fish and wildlife from poaching, exploitation and abuse.

CDFW’s lab is just one of approximately 10 wildlife forensic laboratories in the nation. It works on approximately 100 criminal cases every year and plays a key public safety role by helping to identify the correct species and offending animals in attacks that may involve mountain lions, black bears, coyotes, and even great white sharks.

Born in San Jose and raised in Placer County, Erin holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in genetics from UC Davis.

What inspired you to become a scientist?

From a young age, I always enjoyed math and science. I liked the definitive answers and learning about how things worked. In high school, I had a wonderful biology teacher, and I specifically remember him teaching a unit on DNA. At that time, DNA and genetics were just starting to become more mainstream, and I was just so intrigued with how the DNA bases were essentially translated into the “language” of different functions within the body. I think that was the turning point when I knew specifically what I wanted to study in college.

How did you get to CDFW?

While I was at UC Davis, I started working as an intern and undergraduate researcher with a group that did fish genetics. It turned out that they had a long history of contracts for genetic work with CDFW’s Fisheries Branch, so I had my first exposure to the department there. I was not necessarily interested in sticking with fish genetics as I was becoming more interested in the law enforcement and forensic aspects of DNA. I thought I’d end up working in human forensics at the time.

It was my uncle who worked as one of the hatchery coordinators in the department who connected me with wildlife forensics -- kind of by accident. He told me, “Hey, there are these two guys in Region 2 who walk around in lab coats all the time. I’m not exactly sure what they do, but they have something to do with forensics. You should really look into it.” And so I did.

I ended up meeting Jim Banks, who was a senior wildlife forensic specialist and had been with the department for nearly 20 years. He invited me to come in and learn about the techniques they were using and what some of their investigations looked like. Little did I know he was testing me as a replacement for his scientific aid who was about to go off to graduate school. When she left, I got a scientific aid position at the lab. I guess you could say the rest is history.

Unfortunately, the lab has always been very small. For the majority of its existence, it was run by only two full-time staff and scientific aids, so I was actually a scientific aide from 2000 to 2007. It was a long ride. I obtained a full-time position in 2007 when Jim Banks retired.

Let’s say you’re in a social setting without any CDFW colleagues around. How do you explain what you do for a living?

I usually ask them, “Do you ever watch ‘CSI?’ ” Most of the time they say, “Of course, that’s such a cool show.” And then I say, “Just imagine instead of humans, it’s crimes involving wildlife.” My joke is always that human forensics is boring – you only work on one species. With wildlife, the possibilities are essentially endless.

How many species do you typically work on?

We currently have extensive DNA databases and can do individual matching like they do in human forensics on California deer, elk, mountain lion, black bear, coyotes and wolves. We can also use DNA to identify virtually any animal to the species level. The lab has done cases involving everything from abalone to zebra.

Beyond processing criminal evidence, can you explain the lab’s public safety role?

The lab is called in to assist with DNA analyses on many public safety incidents – especially when there is the potential of physical contact between a person and an animal and the department needs to confirm the species or identity the offending animal. Typically, these incidents involve black bear, mountain lion or coyotes, though we’ve also analyzed attacks by other species – deer, river otter, and great white sharks to name a few. By analyzing the DNA left in the form of saliva around bite wounds or even so-called “touch” DNA from claw wounds, we can verify an attack actually happened, confirm the species involved, and, depending on the species, obtain the genetic profile and sex of the offending animal. This genetic information allows us to compare the DNA profiles of trapped suspect animals with the offending animal’s DNA collected directly from the human victim. When these genetic profiles are a match, we can confirm with statistical certainty that the trapped suspect is indeed the offender. If the profiles do not match, we can free the innocent – which has happened a good number of times.

What do you like best about your job?

I like that we can use DNA to tell the story of what actually happened or what is actually present in each case. Many times, the suspected poachers’ stories or even accounts from people involved in possible wildlife attacks just don’t add up. Sometimes even what our wildlife officers believe to be true from their investigation is different than what the DNA shows. DNA doesn’t lie so letting the science speak and tell the true story is a wonderful tool.

If you had free rein and unlimited funding, what scientific project would you most like to take on?

This is a very difficult question as there are so many projects to choose from. As a forensic lab, we try to watch what the human forensic labs are doing and mimic their methods to the best of our abilities. We are currently watching what is happening with Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) and how this technology will evolve in the forensic community. We are interested in the potential to utilize this to combat issues such as “zone poaching” – killing a deer out of a zone for which the hunter doesn’t have a tag -- or possibly issues regarding hybridization.

With the passage of AB 96 and the resulting new ivory laws in 2015, we are doing more work with wildlife that is trafficked internationally. The demands placed on the WFL have already expanded beyond what we envisioned, resulting in new collaborative efforts and non-DNA-based analyses. I don’t know exactly where any of these paths will lead, but I do know that the WFL will continue to do its best to answer any legal questions through the use of thorough and principled scientific methods.

Tell us something about yourself people would be surprised to learn.

Many people know that I am a lifelong equestrian. I still love to ride and compete, but my secret goal in life is to be on “American Ninja Warrior.” I do a lot of physical fitness type activities, but nowhere near the training needed for that show – yet!

CDFW Photos. Top Photo: Erin Meredith.