Featured Scientist

One of several burned trail cameras Martinelli lost in the Knoxville Wildlife Area as a result of the County Fire in July 2018.


Martinelli on the bagpipes


Martinelli holds a kingsnake from the Santa Rosa Plain Vernal Pool Ecological Reserve in Sonoma County

Stacy Martinelli is CDFW’s wine country wildlife biologist. An environmental scientist based in Santa Rosa, Stacy is assigned to Napa and Sonoma counties where she has worked the past 10 years conducting wildlife research, resolving human-wildlife conflicts and helping manage CDFW’s properties.

Stacy was born and raised in Montreal, Canada. She earned an undergraduate degree in wildlife management from Montreal’s McGill University and a master’s degree in wildlife ecology, also from McGill. For her graduate research, she studied black ducks in Nova Scotia, one of Canada’s Maritime provinces on the Atlantic Coast.

What brought you to the United States?

Work – like every immigrant. I just couldn’t find work in Canada so I answered an ad in an ornithological newsletter looking for help on a waterfowl research project down in Los Banos. I was like, “I’ll do that. That’ll be fun. I’ll just start building my résumé.” It was a six-month contract helping a graduate student from the University of Missouri with some research. The project ended and I thought, “I like California.” That was in 1995.

How did you get to CDFW?

After Los Banos, somebody knew somebody that needed a biologist for the Suisun Resource Conservation District (SRCD) in the Suisun Marsh. I spent three years in that job. I lived out in the barracks on Grizzly Island alongside CDFW employees. It was really a lot of fun. At SRCD, we worked closely with the department as well. So I knew people and how the department worked and I thought I would love to work for the department. I applied for a Habitat Conservation Program job in San Diego in 1988 and spent a year down there as an environmental scientist reviewing projects and issuing permits. I got a transfer and promotion to our Bay Delta Region and worked in our Timberland Conservation Program until 2008 when I got my current job.

What’s kept you in this job for the past decade?

It’s such a great job. I am so thankful for this job. It’s so variable. It’s a good mix of field work, research and monitoring. There’s a lot of hands-on work. Sonoma and Napa counties are really exceptional because there is just high biodiversity here and there is still a lot of open space. I am a little worried about the housing crunch and all the talk to build more housing but there’s still a lot of great wildlife habitat that’s out here. We’ve got the coast in Sonoma. In Napa, we’ve got the beautiful east side with the Knoxville Wildlife Area that’s still pristine. And even here on the west side of Santa Rosa, we’ve got (endangered) tiger salamanders. We’ve got neighbors around them, but they’re still here and that’s really cool. We’re trying to do everything we can to make sure they don’t disappear.

Last October, this region experienced some of the most devastating wildfires in U.S. history. You’ve had more fires this year. What’s been the impact to wildlife?

There was high mortality for sure, especially with the Tubbs Fire last year, which burned so quickly. The species that live here – bobcat, coyote, gray fox, blacktail deer – they’re fairly resilient and adaptable. I don’t worry about them on a population level. They are going to be fine.

I am working on two projects right now looking at fire effects. One of those is in the Knoxville Wildlife Area. This is year three of a camera trap study. It’s a way of measuring the wildlife community with cameras in terms of abundance and presence of different species and the balance among those species.

I’ve got 23 trail cameras spread out there in a grid pattern about a kilometer apart. I’ve got half of my cameras on the west side of the wildlife area and half of my cameras on the east side. The east side burned in July in the County Fire and I lost a bunch of cameras. They just melted. But some survived and I’ve got photos of the flames and the smoke and everything.

The cool thing is I have three years of baseline data so I know what the wildlife community looks like pre-fire and now we get to see what the wildlife community looks like post-fire. We actually talked to Cal Fire at one point about doing a prescribed burn to study this exact thing, and now 6,000 acres are gone as a result of the County Fire.

My hope is that we see a rejuvenation of the chaparral community because that stuff just gets super woody. Deer browse those shrub species and as they age and become woody, they lose their nutritional value. All the new growth is going to provide a wonderful new food source for them. I’m pretty excited about the whole thing.

It sounds like the Knoxville Wildlife Area is a pretty special place.

It’s a very important piece of property. I’m so lucky I get to work on it. It’s huge. It’s 22,000 acres of mostly oak woodlands and grasslands with the chaparral component. There’s not a lot of other public hunting land around here. If you’re a Bay Area resident, Knoxville is the closest place to hunt deer.

The funny thing is when I first started working there I was like, “OK, nothing lives here.” I never saw any wildlife. Maybe I would see a deer or two by the side of the road but even when I explored the backcountry, I never saw much of anything. It was like a dead zone. What lives here? I have no idea.

But we’ve found all kinds of wildlife with our camera study. We found bears, which I thought was cool. We knew there were mountain lions, but we wanted documentation. There are more deer there than I thought. We never used to see bucks. But then I got some cameras up in the high elevations, the mostly inaccessible areas and it was like, “Aha! I know where you are now!” We saw badger. We found roadrunner. We found spotted skunk. These are all species that would be really tough to see in the field. So it’s been really exciting.

Is there a particular project you’ve worked on over your career that you’re especially proud of?

I’m not sure I’ve done that signature project yet. To me, land conservation is the biggest contribution that I think I can make and we as a department can make. They’re just not making any more land. If we don’t get the land, there’s always the risk of development. I’m pretty passionate about land conservation for wildlife. So I’m waiting for that opportunity to be part of locking up a piece of land for the wildlife community – and for the public, too.

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

I think the best thing is to do as much field work as you possibly can – especially during your undergraduate studies. Volunteer. Get an internship. Just be active in the wildlife community as best you can.

We have students call us quite often and we hire a bunch of scientific aides. I’ve done a lot of interviews and looked at a lot of résumés. Unfortunately, we see people who have graduated from college without a stitch of field experience. They’ve not done one thing. Start padding your résumé and just be prepared the next couple of years to travel around and do field projects throughout the state, throughout the country, throughout the world. Eventually you will get there. But be patient because you have to suffer some horrible pay and eating Top Ramen for a while before you can latch onto something permanent.

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

I play bagpipes in a bagpipe band. I play with the Macintosh Pipe Band in Larkspur, Marin County, and I go down and practice every week. We compete in the Bay Area, Monterey, and have played across the U.S., Scotland and Mexico. I learned how to play in Canada and I’ve stuck with it ever since. It’s a passion of mine.

Photos courtesy of Stacy Martinelli. Top Photo: Martinelli searches Mount St. Helena in Napa County for deer fecal pellets as part of CDFW’s statewide deer population survey, which extracts DNA information from the pellets.

 

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)

Environmental Scientist Tom Greiner at the helm of CDFW research vessel Triakis.


CDFW Research Vessel Triakis on San Francisco Bay


Greiner holds a young leopard shark


Greiner on Humboldt Bay


Tom Greiner… just for the halibut

Thomas Greiner is an environmental scientist for the Aquaculture and Bays Management Project in CDFW’s Marine Region. He has more than 23 years experience with the department. Based out of the Santa Rosa office, his main duties include monitoring and management of the commercial herring fishery in San Francisco Bay and biological assessment of California’s estuaries.

Tom earned a double major in general Biology and Fine Arts from Eastern Michigan University. He came to CDFW in 1989 as a scientific aid. Afterwards he pursued a Master’s degree at Humboldt State University. After another stint as a scientific aide, Tom was hired as a Senior Laboratory Assistant for the CDFW’s San Francisco Bay Study and later promoted to Marine Biologist and Associate Biologist and is now an Environmental Scientist.

Who or what inspired you to become a scientist?

I have had an interest in nature, and animals in particular, since I was knee-high to a porcupine. My mother’s willingness to put up with all sorts of critters in the house certainly paved the way. Along the way several people tried to warn me that there are very few jobs in natural resources, but my stubbornness won out.

Can you give us an overview of the herring fishery and tell us why it’s important?

The primary commercial herring fishery in California occurs in San Francisco Bay. It is primarily a roe fishery with its product exported to Japan, where it is considered a delicacy and is a traditional holiday gift. There is also a smaller herring-eggs-on-kelp fishery and a fresh fish fishery for local consumption. In addition, there is a sport fishery for bait and food.

The San Francisco Bay herring fishery was once highly profitable, but a reduction in the price per ton paid to commercial fishers, due to competition from other fishing areas and diminishing demand in Japan, has led to reduced fishing effort.

What is a typical day like for you at work?

A typical day is spent in the office manipulating data and writing or editing documents, but work still takes me out into the field. In the summer, I occasionally help with fish rescues or sample the local estuaries by kayak using beach seines. Winter is my busy field season. I sample Pacific herring in San Francisco Bay aboard a research vessel by deploying a mid-water trawl. On a trawl day I typically get up long before sunrise and meet the crew, which consists of one boat operator (me or one of the other Herring Team biologists) and two winch operators. Once on the water, we look for cormorants, gulls, seals and sea lions to help us find schools of fish. After we have found a school, the vessel operator plans a strategy for the trawl which includes assessing potential hazards, determining tow direction (we tow with the current), and amount of line we need to let out to get the net down to the school of fish. We avoid trawling in rough seas or swift currents, but things can still get dicey – between vessel breakdowns, tangling up or ripping the net, and getting the net stuck in the substrate, trawling is often an adventure.

We collect data on age, length, weight and reproductive status from these samples. We use this data to assess condition of the San Francisco Bay Pacific herring spawning population. This information, along with a spawning biomass estimate made by another Herring Team member, is used to set the next season’s commercial fishing quota.

Managing the quota requires up to the hour information on herring fishing activity and landings along with coordinated, decisive action when calling for closure of the fishery to prevent over-exploitation of the herring resource. I coordinate fishery closures with the Herring Team, CDFW enforcement and the U.S. Coast Guard.

What is it about the work you do that you find most interesting or rewarding?

It is very rewarding working as part of a well-oiled (okay, occasionally squeaky) team to protect our natural resources. Precision teamwork is required both in the management of the commercial fishery and safely operating our sampling vessel.

What is the accomplishment you’re most proud of?

There isn’t one single accomplishment that I pride myself on above others, but instead it is my dependable, consistent, quality work. Through many years of study, I have developed a good reputation for reliable identification of estuarine fish and macroinvertebrate species. Continuous identification practice is important as I recently had a SNAFU concerning juvenile jacksmelt and topsmelt IDs – juvenile fish identification can be very tricky and the characteristics used to differentiate species in adult fish don’t always apply to the little guys.

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

Restoring and protecting habitat and native wildlife and monitoring the recovery would be very rewarding. Healthy and varied habitat is often the key component in an ecosystem. One nice part is that this can be done on a small scale and some benefits may still be observed. Planting one tree can make a difference, especially in an urban area that lacks trees.

Are you a recreational angler (or hunter) yourself?

It has been quite a while, but I occasionally fish for food. I think that my main purpose in fishing is to make my friends feel good because they catch more fish than I do. It’s been much longer since I’ve hunted, but I also support the idea of hunting for food.

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

Get a degree in biological sciences, natural resources or related field. Meeting working biologists is very helpful and volunteering shows motivation. Be flexible in the job locations and positions that you are willing to accept. Very few people get permanent positions with CDFW right out of college. You need to have persistence, persistence, persistence, grit and patience. And learn to be frugal – you won’t make a lot of dough in this profession.

Top Photo: Tom Greiner, Arn Aarreberg and Ryan Watanabe identify and measure fish and invertebrates sampled by beach seine from Estero de San Antonio, a coastal lagoon in northern Marin County.