Featured Scientist

Preparing to plant 350 Mesquite trees at the Palo Verde Ecological Reserve.


A 10,000 gallon water storage tank before installation.


Water storage tank, and drinker box, during installation.

Richard Francis is a wildlife habitat supervisor for CDFW’s Inland Deserts Region. He’s based in Blythe, in eastern Riverside County near the California/Arizona state line. He was raised in the city of Corona, also in Riverside County, where he graduated from high school. As a young man Richard was anxious to have a career involving the outdoors, which is how he ended up working at a ski lodge in Mammoth, before spending 25 years as a fishing guide on the Colorado River, just south of Hoover Dam and Lake Mead. His love of the outdoors finally led him to CDFW in 2005 where he became a seasonal aide, then a technician, and eventually a wildlife habitat supervisor.

What does your job as a wildlife habitat supervisor entail?

I’m in charge of fish and wildlife technician seasonal aides, managing properties and making decisions on what to do with those properties. A large part of my job is creating food plots and habitat for wildlife. That means planting trees, growing food, putting in riparian habitat, and taking out invasive species and noxious weeds and replacing them with native plants and animals to create better habitat for wildlife. I have a few other duties, like habitat restoration along the Colorado River.

Much of the work we do is of direct benefit to hunters. Blythe has a good population of mule deer, and this is one of the premier white-winged and mourning dove hunting areas in the United States. We also have 60 acres of wetlands for waterfowl hunting. We plant those ponds with Japanese millet, which is basically a weed and can get up to 6 feet tall. It’s used for both waterfowl habitat and as a food source.

Why did you make the jump from being a licensed hunting and fishing guide to working for a fish and wildlife conservation agency?

It sounds kind of crazy to leave that because I really enjoyed guiding and helping people learn about hunting, fishing and conservation of our unique desert fish and wildlife, but it was time to grow up! There were some things missing in my life, like a monthly check. It’s very unusual but I’m one of few people in this work without a college degree. I believe I was hired because of my knowledge of fish and wildlife habitat, and because I have experience in the operations of farm equipment and farming practices.

Can you describe the property where your work takes place?

Our main focus is the Palo Verde Ecological Reserve. It’s farmland purchased in 2005 and consists of two units. One is north of Blythe and is approximately 1,500 acres that are planted in cottonwood and mesquite trees. Two hundred of those acres have been set aside for waterfowl and upland game bird hunting. The newest property, purchased in 2017, is approximately 400 acres of farmland, also in the Blythe area. It’s currently planted in wheat and 400 mesquite trees. The wheat will be cut weeks prior of opening of the first dove season, Sept. 1, and will be open throughout the entire upland season. Our game species include white-winged dove, mourning dove, Eurasian-collared dove, Gambel’s quail and rabbits. All are available for hunting on this property.

What’s a typical day for you?

It depends on the season. In the wintertime we irrigate duck ponds and clear the ditches of invasive species. We disc and plant wheat fields for our upland game bird program. We plant the wheat in the winter, and we irrigate and farm it like a crop, but we mow it rather than harvest it. When we mow it down, it attracts doves for dove hunting. It feeds everything – the deer love it. In the springtime we do a little bit of monitoring of the deer population and waterfowl. Monitoring in our area is done by visual surveys and game cameras placed in strategic high traffic locations. The cameras are checked on a monthly basis. Then in the summer, as the heat comes, we spend more time out in the desert. We have a series of wildlife drinkers that CDFW has installed to provide water for wildlife species in the hottest part of the year. We have to go out and do maintenance on those and make sure they’re full of water. If the water levels get low, we haul water into the desert and fill them up, and that happens all summer long.

Why is it important for CDFW to create and fix habitat, as opposed to allowing habitat to be created naturally?

It’s best to keep invasive stuff at bay, to keep areas like they were. We keep the noxious weeds out of there, and the native plants come back and the wildlife will follow. In the ’80s, the population of waterfowl (Canadian geese and duck) were in the hundreds of thousands. Then the numbers dropped off for no obvious reason. We believe they’re coming back now because we got rid of the salt cedars and phragmites (non-native reed or wetland grass) and replaced them with huge cottonwood and mesquite groves.

When the Palo Verde Ecological Reserve was established, there was a healthy population of desert mule deer living among mesquite on farmland across the river in Arizona. Now that our trees are grown, we see the deer swim back and forth to live among the mesquite, cottonwood, and giant willows that we planted. In a single day we might see 75 deer in the open and many more within the trees, where they take advantage of the cover.

What projects have you worked on that you’re the most proud of?

Installing and maintaining the wildlife drinkers is some of the hardest work I’ve done. A drinker is a 10,000 gallon underground storage tank with a drinker box connected to it. There’s a dam built uphill from the storage tank, so when it rains, the water collects and fills the storage tank. If the conditions are right in the desert, they can stay full for a long time but they often need maintenance or refilling in July or August. That’s really hard work because we sometimes need heavy equipment like excavators, up in the mountains to get it done. We have to keep a level head and work well together because it’s hot, exhausting and can be dangerous. But it’s rewarding to know the work will enable important species, like bighorn sheep and deer to survive. We also put in small-game drinkers for the birds that live in the desert.

How bad are the weather conditions?

Come July and August it will be up to 115 degrees in the desert and the humidity can make it feel like it’s 125. On those days, your time outside is very limited. You have to be finished by noon or 1 p.m. so we start at 5 a.m. or earlier, depending on what we’re doing that day. If we’re working way out in the desert checking drinkers, we might leave at 3:30 or 4 a.m. just to avoid the heat.

If you weren’t doing this – if jobs working with wildlife and the great outdoors didn’t exist – what else would you be doing?

Fishing and hunting mostly! Or maybe I’d be an executive chef at my own restaurant. It’d be a barbecue restaurant. My specialty is everything – brisket, ribs, pork butts. But I have 15 years in at CDFW. Though l can retire at 20 years, if they’ll have me I’d be happy to stay. I love this job. It’s awesome – I’m blessed.

CDFW photos. Top Photo. Richard Francis, in a wheat field at the Palo Verde Ecological Reserve. 

The Hope Valley Wildlife Area in Alpine County makes for great hiking in the fall and snowshoeing in the winter. Shelly, who helps manage the area for CDFW, enjoys a fall day there with her family.


Shelly shows off the D3-5 buck she harvested last deer season.


Shelly tags a sedated bear captured in the Tahoe basin. The bear was hazed upon release to keep it fearful of humans and away from developed neighborhoods.


Hunting season is family time for the Blairs. Shelly, her children Jesse and Amy, pose with their spring turkeys.

Shelly Blair is an environmental scientist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s (CDFW) North Central Region. She serves as the unit wildlife biologist for Alpine and El Dorado counties.

Based out of her hometown of Placerville, Shelly’s ties to the local community and CDFW run deep. Her father, the late Bob Pirtle, was a California game warden for 30 years, with most of his career spent patrolling El Dorado County. Shelly’s brother, Sean Pirtle, is a CDFW wildlife officer in Yuba County.

In addition to conducting wildlife research and dealing with a variety of human-wildlife conflicts, Shelly manages CDFW lands in the two counties, which include the popular Hope Valley Wildlife Area, and the Heenan Lake and Red Lake wildlife areas. She holds a biology degree from Chico State.

What was it like growing up the daughter of a game warden?

I tell people I was a Fish and Game brat because it was so much a part of our lives. It was a wonderful childhood. We had wildlife around us all the time. My dad would have to confiscate fawns from people keeping them illegally. He would bring them home and we’d care for them a couple of nights. We had injured wildlife of all kinds. And my brother and dad have been avid hunters. They lived and breathed it – and my brother still does. All this amazing exposure to wildlife and the outdoors propelled us to follow in my dad’s footsteps.

In your job, you must run into some of the same people and families that you grew up with and who knew your father.

I do. I feel very privileged to be able to work in the same area my dad patrolled. These are my stomping grounds. It’s like an extension of my backyard. It is an honor to be investing in the people he was invested in – all the ranchers he worked with and all agency folks he had working relationships with. And now I’m able to carry on those relationships. I’m fortunate enough to have my dream job. This is always what I wanted to do – be the wildlife biologist for El Dorado County. I am very involved with the local schools and the community. I love to mentor students who are interested in what I do, and I try to instill a passion and appreciation in them for the work that we do. A lot of people don’t even know this is a career opportunity that’s available to them.

How did your career with CDFW begin?

It was a long and winding path. I volunteered right out of high school at our Wildlife Investigations Lab (in Rancho Cordova) and had a lot of different experiences there. I held a lot of scientific aid jobs while I was in college. I worked for our North Central Region 2 office. I worked in downtown Sacramento for our Upland Game Program. I worked in our education and outreach branch. I worked with the interpretive staff at the Gray Lodge Wildlife Area, and at the hunter check station at the Upper Butte Basin Wildlife Area. So when I graduated from Chico State with my biology degree I thought I was a shoo-in for a job at Fish and Game. I think I applied for eight positions – and didn’t get any of them.

But I also applied for a position with the California Department of Food and Agriculture. It was the only wildlife biologist position within the entire agency – kind of a trial to interface with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services. And they hired me. So that was my first permanent position. And I’m actually so grateful for that experience because what I learned in that job was so valuable to what I’m doing today with all the human-wildlife conflict. It totally prepared me for what I’m doing now.

I did that for five years. Food and Agriculture lost funding to continue the position, and I had kids at home and wanted to spend more time with them so I quit. About a week later I got a call from Pam Swift at our Wildlife Investigations Lab about a scientific aid job with the Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) monitoring program. She told me I could work from home – and that was my foot back into the door with CDFW. That was in 2005. I got a permanent position in the Wildlife Investigations Lab in 2007 and my current job came open in 2010.

What’s a typical day like?

It completely varies. I can have a day all planned out where I am going to focus on a specific thing and then I will get a phone call about a wildlife conflict event or a wildlife welfare incident and I have to respond.

There’s a lot of field work in the spring and summer. All of our unit biologists coordinate and help each other with our different research projects – whether it’s deer darting or helicopter surveys or elk work. Obviously, there is more access to our higher elevation lands in the summer. I attend agency coordination meetings and county Fish and Game commission meetings so that I can remain engaged in the local community environmental issues and enhance interagency cooperation. The human-wildlife conflict work is often what we spend the majority of our time doing.

What kind of human-wildlife conflicts are you dealing with?

Wild turkeys. Mountain lions. Bears. I manage a lot of the South Lake Tahoe bear issues, and it’s one of the biggest challenges for my area. We’re getting more vineyards in my counties so I’m getting a lot more deer depredation calls. I deal with a lot of animal welfare issues because there is a huge wildlife feeding problem in El Dorado County. The result of that is deer getting caught in fencing, wire getting wrapped around their antlers and a lot of deer congregating in certain areas. I’ve had to rescue a lot of animals the last few years.

Besides being illegal, folks are doing more harm than good by feeding the deer?

They are bringing the animals closer to homes by feeding them – and that’s where there are a lot of obstacles they can get stuck in. Feeding encourages animals to congregate unnaturally, causing disease spread, habituated behaviors and unhealthy food options for the animals.

What’s the most rewarding project you’ve been involved with at CDFW?

I have a deer research project that I’m leading in the Crystal Basin area. We’re in the fifth year. It’s the Pacific Deer Herd on the western side of the Sierra. They are a mule deer-black-tailed deer cross. They are migratory deer, but they winter with resident deer, which is really interesting.

It started as a capture and collaring project to figure out survival and mortality, but it has expanded because the GPS collar data have given us great information on their migration, timing and behavior. We are discovering a lot of interesting things about these deer; it’s like pulling back the curtain on an amazing ecological mystery on the landscape. These deer haven’t been monitored since the 1980s, and the technology is so much better now that we can not only see what they are doing but sometimes understand why they are doing it or at least speculate as to why.

So what are we learning about these deer?

Their movement patterns, for starters. Some of them will go from winter range to summer range and then back in a two-week period. These exploratory movements cause an enormous amount of energy expended in such a short time. They spend a lot of time in burn areas and old fire scars. Obviously, there is better feed there and successional growth but how long are they going to keep doing that? We’ve also learned that they die a lot. There is a huge mortality rate for this herd – mostly from mountain lions, but we’ve also had four poaching incidents and three diseased deer.

In all of our many hours trying to dart and collar deer for the study, we drive around in varying areas of their summer range. Most of the time we find the deer hanging around campground areas where there’s a lot of human activity and recreation. So we’ve started to think about that while looking at the high mortality rates. And none of the mortalities ever really happens in those areas. So one theory we have – and I’m not sure how we would actually prove it – is that these deer have learned it’s safer to be around people because there are not as many predators that want to be in those areas.

Other observations are in the more remote areas where you think you would find a lot of deer and where there is just all this beautiful habitat – and we don’t see deer in those areas anymore. It begs the question: Are these deer changing their behavior to adapt to the predators? It’s just really interesting.

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

I’m a hunter education instructor. I got the idea after my kids went through hunter education and I thought I could create a fun, interactive class. I teach with my colleague Sara Holm. We enjoy seeing the kids succeed and then venturing out to participate in this hunting tradition.

I love to hunt and fish, but I worry that the hunting tradition is dying. I’ve tried to instill in my own kids an appreciation for the entire hunting experience; that it isn’t just about the harvest. It was important to my dad as well. Before he passed, he bought us all lifetime hunting licenses. I’ve had the most precious, memorable times with my dad, brother, husband and my kids while we’ve been out hunting.

When we teach our hunter education classes, there are some people in there who just want their kids to learn gun safety. They are not really interested in hunting. But we really emphasize the whole experience of hunting. Hunting affords you such unique opportunities to experience wildlife and ecology and become part of that natural process. And if you go out and don’t get anything you’ve still had a great day.

What do you most like to hunt and fish for?

I love spring turkey hunting. It’s such an adrenaline rush and beautiful to be outdoors that time of the year. I love duck hunting because there really is no other reason to be up at 2 a.m. to sit in an often wet, cold duck blind other than to watch the sunrise and hear the birds flying and chattering above. I love fly fishing. Unfortunately, my busy family schedule doesn’t allow me to do it very often but there’s just something about the rhythm of it and being on the water.

I haven’t done much deer hunting, but I did get a deer this past year hunting with my brother in D3-5. I’m not a trophy hunter. You can’t put the antlers in soup. I want the meat. There’s something unique about harvesting game that you will consume. It’s delicious and healthy, too.

CDFW Photos. Top Photo: Shelly rescues a deer that was tangled up in a rope swing. Wildlife welfare and human conflict issues occupy much of her time.

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.

Alaina Conrad, a Scientific Aid in the California Recreational Fisheries Survey (CRFS) program holding a lingcod for weight and measurement caught off the coast of San Diego. The CRFS program collects data on angler activities, including fishing recreational sport fishing boats, man-made fishing structures (piers and jetties) and beaches and banks along the California coast. These data are then used to estimate total marine recreational finfish catch and effort in California.


Alaina Conrad, a Scientific Aid in the California Recreational Fisheries Survey (CRFS) program prepares to speak to anglers in the San Diego Area about their finfish catch. She and the other sci aids in the CRDF program interview anglers about their day of fishing, including where they fished, depth, targeted species and other information that is used to estimate marine recreational finfish catch in state waters.


Alaina Conrad, a Scientific Aid in the California Recreational Fisheries Survey (CRFS) program holds two Salps, a deep water organism, and rarely seen on the surface, that were caught in a fishing line on a sport fishing boat.

Alaina Conrad is a Fish and Wildlife Scientific Aid in CDFW’s Marine Region. Based in San Diego, she works on the California Recreational Fisheries Survey (CRFS). The CRFS is a coordinated sampling survey designed to gather catch and effort data from anglers in all modes of marine recreational finfish fishing. Alaina is one of about 70 CRFS samplers statewide. She collects data on angler activities, including recreational fishing boats, man-made fishing structures (piers and jetties) and beaches and banks along the California coast. These data are used to estimate total marine recreational finfish catch and effort in California.

Alaina earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Marine Biology from Texas A&M University at Galveston. She was based at the university’s satellite campus in the Gulf of Mexico, which focuses on all things related to the ocean – from chemistry and biology to marine literature and maritime business. She has been with CDFW since June of 2017.

What inspired you to pursue a career in marine biology?

I grew up in Monterey and was fortunate to take a marine science class in my sophomore year of high school. My teacher inspired me to learn more about the ocean and what dwells within it. Throughout high school, I volunteered at the world-renowned Monterey Bay Aquarium, taking every opportunity to learn more about the aquarium and its animals through job shadows and extra classes in the evenings.

How did your university experiences prepare you for your career?

While attending Texas A&M, I traveled to Alaska and Greece to help graduate students collect data through destination research courses. In Alaska, we collected data on the local sea otter population to monitor its overall health and recovery. In Greece, we researched the local dolphin populations, tracking their movements and determining if the population was a transient or resident pod. We also studied the sustainability of the local fisheries and their farming practices. I also had the opportunity to study in the Marine Mammal Behavioral Ecology Group, identifying individual dolphins throughout consecutive years in various places around the world. The data was being used to determine if the pods were residential or transient and if they were present all year or just at certain seasons.

My last summer in college, I was able to volunteer with the Houston Audubon Society and American Bird Conservancy as a nest site steward. Galveston Island is a nesting site for Piping Plovers and Least Terns. Both birds nest on the ground during a high traffic time – summer vacation. As a volunteer, I would educate beachgoers about the birds and how best to avoid disturbing them with friendly reminders to remain outside the roped areas and keeping their dogs on leashes. Species counts were also taken at the beginning of the shifts and nest sites were visited in order to determine the health of the nest and local population.

You just passed your first anniversary working for CDFW’s CRFS program. How does this statewide survey effort benefit the fishery?

CRFS plays a very important role in the sustainability of our local fisheries by collecting fishery-dependent data on California’s marine recreational fisheries and estimating catch and effort. These data provide fisheries managers with the best possible science needed for management decisions.

What is your typical survey day like?

Upon arrival at the sample sites, a starting count of anglers (or trailers) is taken to help determine the effort at or originating from the site. As anglers are leaving, we interview them and ask questions about their fishing trip. We ask questions like what time they began fishing at that location, or – if they were on a boat – we get a launch time in order to determine the length of time of their trip. We also ask where they were fishing and at what depth, in order to collect data on areas that are being fished. A target species is notated as well as all catch whether kept or released. If they have kept fish, we will take weight and length measurements of the fish as well as a total number of each species. Lastly, we will collect a zip code, number of anglers in the group and number of days fished over the past 12 months in order to determine where people are coming from to fish and how much effort they exhibit over a year.

What do anglers think of the surveys?

Most of the time, anglers are receptive to the surveys and understand that it helps to maintain sustainable fisheries. I have had anglers thank me for doing my job many of them are excited to see us out there helping to monitor the health of the fisheries. There are always a few people in a hurry, or who have had a bad day and will refuse to answer questions, in which case I will just move on to the next angler.

What’s the most interesting thing you have seen doing your surveys?

I get to see a variety of interesting things while at work but the most fascinating to me was a colony of Salps that got tangled on an angler’s line while on a sport fishing boat. She pulled up her line and a colony of around 20-30 individuals were wrapped around her line. As the line was pulled out of the water, the colony broke apart, but a few were left stuck to the line. Many of the anglers (deckhands included) thought the “alien” looking creature was a kind of egg sac. They are oblong and clear with a deep orange/red ball in the upper corner. Salps are a deep water organism that don’t get to be seen often, especially not held in the palm of your hand.

What do you like most about working for CDFW?

I enjoy constantly learning about new species and discovering new information about those I am familiar with already! I also enjoy being able to discuss conservation efforts with some of the anglers and hearing their stories from growing up and seeing how much the fisheries have changed.

Is there a particular species or project that you’d like to learn more about?

I have always been fascinated by the intelligence of octopus. I would enjoy getting to study them more closely in the future. I am also very interested in population dynamics of Ornithology and habitat usage and conservation for nesting grounds of threatened species.

You’re still early in your career. What would you like to be doing in 10 years?

In 10 years I hope to be involved in conservation research and public education hopefully involving either cephalopods or marsh birds and habitats.

CDFW photos courtesy of Alaina Conrad

Christy prepares for a day’s work underwater at La Jolla.


Christy Juhasz works on an abalone density survey off the northern California coast.

CDFW Environmental Scientist Christy Juhasz works for the Marine Region’s Invertebrate Management Project, where she is primarily responsible for managing California’s Dungeness crab fisheries. Christy coordinates preseason quality and domoic acid testing for the commercial fishery, summarizes seasonal landings data and works on rulemaking proposals for both the commercial and recreational Dungeness fisheries.

A Southern California native, Christy earned a bachelor’s degree in marine biology, with a minor in oceanography, from the University of California, Los Angeles. Soon after graduating, Christy’s first paid position involved monitoring and trapping the invasive European green crab in several northern California bays and estuaries. Afterwards, she began working for CDFW as a scientific aid at the Shellfish Health Laboratory, located at the Bodega Marine Laboratory in Bodega Bay, where she spent several years testing quality control measures of a sabellid, polychaete worm that had been introduced at aquaculture facilities.

In 2007, she became a certified CDFW diver and began assisting in abalone density surveys conducted on the Sonoma and Mendocino coasts. In 2011, she was hired in her current position to work on Dungeness crab fisheries management.

What led you to a career in marine biology?

As a child, I spent an inordinate amount at the coast and particularly enjoyed exploring tidepools. I was always fascinated by the creatures that eke out an existence on the water’s edge, fostering my love of marine invertebrate species. This only grew after taking an invertebrate taxonomy course, becoming certified in scientific diving and volunteering at a small, local marine aquarium while in college where I was able to share my love of native California marine life with the public.

Not many people can say they get to dive as part of their job duties. What’s that like?

Before coming to work at CDFW, most of my diving experience was in the warmer waters of Southern California and the Bahamas for training and research, respectively. Diving in the colder and rougher northern California ocean waters has been interesting. My job has taken me to some beautiful underwater habitat where diverse and colorful kelps, invertebrates and rockfish species abound, while also making me a much better diver.

One interesting CDFW dive location includes the site of Mavericks, although not at the height of the surfing season. We were there to assess the red abalone population within the Marine Protected Area and I was able to observe firsthand the effects of the intense wave action that had eroded away the subtidal rocky reef promontories.

How frequently do you get to dive?

Recently, I had my first child so have not been able to get back underwater as intensely since before I was pregnant. Prior to this, I was an active CDFW diver, primarily assisting with monitoring red abalone populations in the summer months. Diving and field work, in general, are always fun to go out and do in coastal locations, but they do require a lot of planning and preparation. Actual collection of data while SCUBA diving really teaches you to be in the moment, as you have multiple tasks to complete underwater. Obviously safety is paramount and you have to pay attention to the air you consume while you’re working, which ultimately limits the amount time you have underwater.

Today, most of your work relates to Dungeness crab. What do you find interesting about this particular fishery?

The Dungeness crab commercial fishery is one of California’s highest valued fisheries and is also one of the state’s oldest fisheries. In fact, regulations governing take of legal-sized males around a set seasonal period date back to the turn of the 20th century, and are known as the 3-S management principle (sex, size and season). The fishery does widely fluctuate from season to season, but with California landings dating back to just over 100 seasons, there have been no observable, long-term crashes in catch history. In recent seasons, the fishery has experienced some record landings in both management areas of the fishery, especially in the central region, which in the past decades rarely contributed to the majority of statewide landings.

I enjoy and thrive in my job under the dynamic and varying responsibilities and tasks that support the operations of the fishery. Whether I’m working on rulemaking packages, meeting with constituents for various issues or incorporating new or more extensive sampling procedures – it’s all very interesting.

Do you work with species other than Dungeness crab?

Yes. Some of my monitoring and rulemaking work involves other invertebrate fisheries in California, which have been increasing in importance (see link to journal article below). This raises new challenges for fisheries managers, especially considering the many invertebrate fisheries we oversee and the various life history strategies characteristic of each species.

For instance, red urchin and red abalone have to be relatively near one another for successful fertilization after they release their gametes into the water column. This is in contrast to Dungeness crab, which mate during the period when females molt, and brood eggs before they hatch. These differences just reveal how each fishery requires a unique set of regulations to effectively manage them.

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

I have been collaborating with other CDFW staff to monitor the arrival of the Dungeness crab megalopae – that’s the last pelagic, larval stage of crabs before they molt and settle to the bottom as juveniles – to California’s bays and estuaries. The study aims to determine if there is link between their relative number and size, and perhaps predict commercial catch three to four years later, which is about when these crabs would grow into the fishery. Work on this is still preliminary, but in the time we have been observing, we have noticed big differences in total numbers and average size. This may be driven by optimal ocean conditions since the planktonic larval stages spend an average of four months total in the water column during the winter and spring months.

I’m also involved in the rulemaking process for the Dungeness crab commercial fishery. One current development is the creation of a formal statewide program for incentivizing the retrieval of lost and abandoned Dungeness crab traps at the end of each season. The fishery has rules in place such as the use of a destruct device that wears away, to allow escapement and prevent a lost or abandoned trap from continuously capturing organisms. However, traps attached to a buoy with vertical lines in the water column that remain in the water past the season pose additional hazards to marine life and vessel traffic. The industry has been piloting local programs for the past several seasons. A formal program is expected to be in place by the end of the 2018-19 season.

Recent seasons of the Dungeness crab fishery have been plagued by high domoic acid levels and low quality, leading to season delays. How has this changed the nature of your work?

The pre-season quality testing has been conducted for the northern portion of the fishery for many years in concert with Washington and Oregon testing. Although procedures have been modified over the years, the scheduled delays are built into the current operations of the fishery. The fishery cannot be delayed due to quality issues past January 15, whereas with domoic acid season delays are unpredictable.

Our efforts to monitor Dungeness crab are more extensive before the start of the season. Dungeness crab fishermen are key players in this task, as I call and email with them to collect and retrieve samples throughout the fishery’s range statewide (this is similar to how the quality testing is conducted as well). I also coordinate with staff from the California of Department of Public Health to ensure that samples collected are properly received by their laboratory testing facility. During the 2015-16 delayed season, CDFW staff worked tirelessly on this sampling effort while navigating the problem under current regulations and effectively communicating the latest information on the status of the delay and potential opening of the season. This was especially important in light of lost revenue due to the unforeseen delays.

Do you expect that domoic acid will continue to be a problem in future seasons?

Domoic acid is a neurotoxin produced by a unicellular algal organisms that thrive in warm water. The domoic acid problem that caused the severe delay of the 2015-16 season was thought to be a direct effect of the anomalous (unusual) ocean warming from the “warm blob” that developed off of US West Coast in 2014. As these anomalous warming ocean conditions persist, so does the problem of harmful algal blooms that cause domoic acid. This has become a top priority for discussion between industry, the Dungeness crab task force and other affected fisheries and agencies. 

CDFW Photos. Top Photo: Christy measuring a dungeness crab.

For Further Reading:

• 2011 Annual Status of the Fisheries Report – Dungeness crab (PDF)
• Marine Invertebrate Survey and Assessment Project
• The Rise of Invertebrate Fisheries and the Fishing Down of Marine Food Webs in California published in California Fish and Game’s Journal 100th Edition (PDF)