Featured Scientist

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)

OSPR’s Jim Hughes and Annie Nelson evaluate an oil spill exercise at the Larkspur Ferry Terminal.


Annie Nelson and Ima Doty on the Schnyder dock in Eureka


Annie Nelson atop Donner Pass, where OSPR has responded to two past pipeline oil spills

Annie Nelson is in her second year as CDFW’s Office of Spill Prevention and Response (OSPR) specialist for best achievable technology, focusing on mechanical oil spill response equipment. She began her career with OSPR as a scientific aid a few months after earning her Bachelor of Science degree in wildlife management from Humboldt State University. She gained permanent employee status as an analyst, working in the Natural Resource Damage Assessment Program. She found it rewarding to witness and coordinate post-spill restoration efforts, but after about seven years, a move to the drills and exercises unit opened the door for her to the world of response preparedness as an environmental scientist. Establishing and fortifying that program took Nelson through the next eight years of her career, before accepting her current position.

What keeps her at OSPR are the wonderful people, the constant learning curve and the many unique opportunities the spill response world provides.

Who or what inspired you to become a scientist?

In 5th or 6th grade, the cutest boy in my class expressed that science was his favorite subject. That was the spark for me. Once I started exploring science, I realized it was really cool and fun to learn. I enjoyed biology and chemistry during high school and became hooked on understanding how our planet operates – down to the molecular level.

What got you interested in working with wildlife?

My senior year of high school came with the opportunity to participate in the Regional Occupational Program (ROP) and I chose “Animal Careers.” The ROP offered classroom education as well as hands-on experience in your field of choice. When it was time to choose jobsites, most of my fellow classmates in the animal careers course worked with veterinarians. I was fortunate enough to get a spot with Wild Things, Inc., an exotic animal facility near my home. I prepared diets and fed the animals, handled them for educational shows and cleaned up after them. I got to work with a variety of wildlife species, from big cats to primates to birds and reptiles – even a sea lion. When it was time to look at colleges and career opportunities, I combined my love for animals with science and studied wildlife at Humboldt State.

Who or what brought you to CDFW? What inspires you to stay?

My dad encouraged me to pursue a career with the state. CDFW was the first agency that came to mind. I applied for the warden cadet academy, wanting to enforce the laws that protect wildlife in California. Unfortunately, my vision disqualified me. I got my foot in the door with a CDFW scientific aid position in the Office of Spill Prevention and Response. I knew very little about oil spills at the time, but 17 years later I am a senior environmental scientist (specialist). My love for this team and continual learning since my first day on the job has kept me with OSPR.

What is a typical day like for you at work? Please describe a “day in the life.”

I usually spend my early morning hours researching online for any new articles that have come out regarding oil spill technology. My focus is mechanical equipment for containment and recovery, for example: boom, sorbents and skimmers. The goal is to evaluate as many as possible and develop a program for best practices. I also develop workshops. Right now, I’m helping to create an agenda for a workshop that focuses on response to spills of oils called bitumen. Bitumen is the consistency of peanut butter at room temperature and sinks in water, making cleanup difficult. This is an area that hasn’t had much advancement with technology but is a growing concern for responders.

As OSPR’s fisheries closure coordinator, I’m the contact person for calls during the work day from field staff who are either participating in an exercises or responding to actual spills for consultation regarding fishery closures due to oil spills. I gather information to provide the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA), the agency that evaluates our information and provides recommendations on whether to close or keep the fishery open. Our agencies work together to determine whether a fisheries closure is necessary, where it will be, and how long it will last during oil spills. Currently, I am working on a presentation to take to our field responders that educates them about this process and their role in it. There is so much to learn, I am never bored!

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

In my second position at OSPR, I joined a brand new team that became the drills and exercises unit. Our role was to ensure that the oil industry in California was prepared to respond to spills. I helped build the program from the ground up, re-writing regulations and evaluating hundreds of response drills and exercises all over the state. Industry soon realized that we meant business and they were quick to comply. Improving spill preparedness through the relationships fostered between OSPR and the oil industry we regulate proved rewarding.

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

The most jaw-dropping incident that has occurred during my career was the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The Macondo well head poured more than 3 billion gallons of crude oil into the Gulf from 5,000 feet below the surface. Eleven people lost their lives when the rig blew up, and it took 87 days to cap the well. This still blows my mind to think about. Although I wasn’t one of them, quite of few of my OSPR co-workers responded to the incident. It was a proud moment for the OSPR team to bring experience and resources to the disaster and help.

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

I’ll stick with my current field. I’d love to conduct studies of the wildlife species most commonly injured by oil spills, in order to develop humane but highly effective hazing techniques and technology. In order to avoid mass wildlife casualties, quick containment of a spill is crucial; however, this doesn’t often occur. Hazing is sometimes necessary to keep animals away from the slick, but the effectiveness is hit-or-miss. I’d be interested in developing some new biology-based tools for hazing to reduce the need for rehabilitation (washing), which can be stressful on wildlife and take up resources.

What is the best thing about being a wildlife scientist?

Knowing that my work ultimately protects California’s wildlife from injury during oil spills is pretty great in itself, but my favorite part of the job is working directly with animals. It’s not every day that I get to handle a common murre or a grebe, but I’ve had opportunities to work in the oiled wildlife care facility in Cordelia, which brought me back to my high school days – feeding birds and cleaning cages. These experiences are always a treat.

Any advice for people considering careers in science or natural resources?

I think that career seekers need to ask themselves three questions: What is my passion, what am I good at, and what opportunities are out there? If you can match up at least two of these with your chosen career path, you have a good chance for success. What I love about the fields of science and natural resources is that our planet is always changing. We will never know everything there is to know and there will always be new discoveries and a need for scientists to study, protect and improve our environment.

Top photo: Annie Nelson (right) and Andrea Moore prepare to board a tug and observe an on-water boom deployment in El Segundo.

CDFW photos

Laura Cockrell with an endangered Green sturgeon she tagged in the Sacramento River for a sturgeon movement study


Laura holds a Western pond turtle at Upper Butte Basin Wildlife Area.


Laura swabs a hunter-harvested Northern pintail for Avian Influenza sampling in 2007 at the Gray Lodge Wildlife Area.

Laura Cockrell is an environmental scientist at the Upper Butte Basin Wildlife Area, which is made up of three units covering nearly 9,700 acres in Butte and Glenn counties. Her duties include coordinating and conducting biological surveys on the wildlife area, managing wood duck nesting boxes, coordinating with volunteers and interacting with partners, including governmental agencies and non-government organizations. While most of her work involves surveying for game species, she has also captured giant garter snakes and western pond turtles for studies, and conducted surveys for yellow-billed cuckoos and Swainson’s hawks. Laura can also regularly be found planning habitat improvement and maintenance projects, writing reports, creating maps designed for public use on the wildlife area and generally assisting the public.

Laura graduated from California State University, Chico in 2007 with a Bachelor of Science in Biological Science with an emphasis in Wildlife Biology. She earned a Master of Science in Biology with a concentration on Applied Ecology from Eastern Kentucky University. Her thesis used Landsat imagery to evaluate trumpeter swan nesting sites in Yellowstone National Park.

Prior to working at the Upper Butte Basin Wildlife Area, she worked for the International Halibut Commission in Dutch Harbor, and for California Waterfowl in the Sacramento Valley, where she worked on summer mallard banding, pintail rocket netting, nest searches and wetland monitoring.

What led you into a career as a wildlife biologist?

I always enjoyed being outside and exploring as a kid. It took me a little while to find my path in college, but I chose to major in biology because studying ecology and nature sounded like a good chance to be outside every day. I signed up for a waterfowl course, and my passion for wildlife really took off after that.

Who or what brought you to CDFW? What inspires you to stay?

When I first started as a scientific aid with the department almost 11 years ago, I was working on the Avian Influenza Project. I swabbed hunter-harvested birds at the check station to be tested for avian influenza in the lab, and surveyed for bird die-offs throughout the region. I had never worked alone before, and it taught me a lot about how important it is to stay focused and on task when you are by yourself!

What inspires me to stay with the department is the potential I see for us to fulfill the goals of our management plan, and to improve habitat on the lands we have been entrusted to manage.

What is a typical day like for you at work?

It depends on the season. Waterfowl season is our busiest season as far as public use. It runs from late October through the beginning of February, but the preparation begins much earlier. During waterfowl season, I am usually in the office or at the check station. After waterfowl season ends, I finalize our hunt records for the end of season report and everyone is out monitoring the area flooding or inspecting damage from flooding. In the spring when we are in full survey mode, I will probably be out in the field before sunrise counting pheasant or quail. During the summer, I am usually in the field banding or in the office working on grant reports. Fall brings us back into preparation for the hunting seasons, where we have to prepare for September dove hunts, the J-9 zone deer hunt and waterfowl season.

What is your favorite species to interact with or study?

I have really enjoyed getting to work with western pond turtles and giant garter snakes. I took herpetology in college and it was great but “herps” were not really my thing until I got to work with them more. Any time we get to work with protected species and species of special concern is rewarding, and it is not something we get to do very often. Seeing protected species thrive on our wildlife areas means the hard work that goes into developing protections is helping local populations persist, and if the local population becomes healthy enough to expand maybe they can rebound throughout their range.

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

Upper Butte Basin Wildlife Area is one of the few wildlife areas with an agriculture lease, so we work with our farmers to support wildlife-friendly agriculture practices. Because of the winter flooding this year, some of the rice fields were too wet during planting season, and farmers will be enrolling those fields in the BirdReturns program, which is offered by The Nature Conservancy in partnership with the California Rice Commission. The Nature Conservancy and the California Rice Commission began this program in 2014 to compensate farmers who provide pop-up habitat for migratory shorebirds in the fall and spring by flooding fallow rice fields. We are planning shorebird surveys during fall migration and I am so excited to see how shorebirds will react, hopefully by returning to the area. During the shorebird survey, we will drive down the roads through the flooded rice fields and count the number and types of shorebirds that are using the fields. Normally, if the fields have been planted in rice, they would not be usable by the birds because they are looking for mudflats, not rice fields. We would hope to see a high diversity of species and large amounts of birds using the flooded rice fields.

What is it about the work you do that you would most like us to know?

There are many constraints on the work we do that are created by factors outside our control. A large part of the work on our wildlife area is managing wetlands, but the drought brought a lot of challenges with water management. We work with what we have, but sometimes it is not a lot and that can be frustrating.

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

Wildlife overpasses/underpasses! Our wildlife area has a highway that bisects one of the units, and the amount of wildlife killed by vehicles is such a shame. A few years ago, we had four deer killed in a quarter-mile stretch in less than a week, and this winter someone ended up driving into a waterway at one of our units to avoid a collision with a deer! There are the standard “deer crossing” signs, but people often drive well over the speed limit and put themselves and wildlife at risk for a collision. There has been a great deal of success in reducing wildlife collisions where wildlife overpasses and underpasses were created. I would love build underpasses with elevated roadways for all the major roadways around our units.

What is the most challenging aspect of your career as an environmental scientist?

More than once, I have had to remind myself, “You signed up for this, so put a smile on your face and get it done!” Walking in waders to check traps when it is 110 degrees out is not fun. Examining a carcass that has been rotting for a week is not fun. Cleaning up garbage is not fun. However, all of those things are critical for what we do! So put a smile on your face, get it done and get on with it.

Is there a preconception about scientists you would like to dispel?

One of my classmates in college told me that I should switch to microbiology because “there is no future in studying plants or animals.” We need to understand our environment, how we interact with it and the impacts we make. Scientists are not always in a lab – they are out in the field, too. Obviously, I did not agree with his assessment or I would be a microbiologist! The guy that I was talking to felt like, career-wise, the money was in lab work and microbiology rather than fieldwork. Part of me can understand that line of reasoning, as there are more jobs with the medical profession if you target microbiology, but if that is not where your passion is then why would you take that path?

All photos courtesy of Laura Cockrell.