Evolutionary Ecology & Conservation of Freshwater Fishes, UC Berkeley
Congrats to Emily Chen, who delivered her finishing talk today to a packed audience! Her talk covered an overview of the different elements of her dissertation research, including dimensions focused on all four runs of Chinook in California’s Central Valley. Emily is on track to finish this summer and will then begin a postdoc exploring factors influencing the dynamics of Chinook salmon in the Klamath Basin. (PC: Rachael Ryan)
FishBio covered our recent work exploring the Central Valley hatchery steelhead portfolio, led by former student Eric Huber (now with the US Fish & Wildlife Service) and including contributions from Rachael Ryan and Stephanie along with our partners with UC Davis and NOAA-Fisheries. Similar to our earlier work with hatchery Chinook (Huber and Carlson 2015), we found a simplification of the Central Valley steelhead hatchery portfolio through time. You can find the blog post here: https://fishbio.com/enhancing-diversity-to-promote-steelhead-resilience/
Huge congratulations to Amy Fingerle on her new California Sea Grant Graduate Student Fellowship! You can learn more about this important collaboration and research here: “Collaborative Conservation of Ishyâat in a Spring-Run Chinook (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) Stronghold“.
Stephanie and Gabe Rossi joined Curtis Knight, the Executive Director of California Trout, on CalTrout’s “Fish Water People” podcast for a fun and rambling conversation about the importance of science in salmon recovery efforts. You can listen to the full episode here: https://caltrout.org/podcast
A conversation with Stephanie was recently featured by the Wild Salmon Center, where Stephanie currently serves on the Science Advisory Board. Through the conversation, Stephanie highlights the importance of habitat mosaics, including “stop over” sites, for supporting a diversity of salmon migratory tactics and life histories. You can find the full conversation here!
Dr. Hank Baker has recently joined the #BerkeleyFreshwater labs as a postdoc, advised by Stephanie and Ted. For his postdoc, Hank is part of a collabortive effort led by Mariska Obedzinski with California Sea Grant and supported by NOAA to explore movement tactics in juvenile coho salmon and the potential importance of lower Willow Creek as non-natal rearing habitat. Welcome, Hank!
We are excited to welcome Avi Kertesz into the Carlson Lab and the #BerkeleyFreshwater labs! Avi joins us from Stillwater Sciences where he worked for a number of years surveying California rivers and fishes. Avi brings a deep interest in salmon life history diversity and resilience. Welcome, Avi!
Albert and Stephanie participated in a workshop on “Revisiting the Freshwater Imperative” in Fort Collins in July. It was a jam packed few days, with a lot of discussion aimed at taking stock of progress made since the original Freshwater Imperative was published nearly 30 years ago and advancing an interdiscipinary freshwater science research agenda. Stay tuned for products from this effort!
Congratulations to Kasey Pregler on her new position as the Assistant Unit Leader of the USGS Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit in New Mexico. We are sad to see Kasey go, but thrilled for Kasey to be starting a new lab and contributing to fish conservation efforts in New Mexico and beyond! You can learn more about what the new Pregler Lab is up to here!
Congratulations to Kasey Pregler and team on a new open-access publication in Conservation Letters evaluating the success of a genetic rescue intervention. This study represents the results of a large collaboration involving researchers at UC Berkeley, California Sea Grant, NOAA-Fisheries, and the Army Corps of Engineers, and Kasey’s effort on the project was supported by a UC Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship. You can learn more about this important project and results here!