The Story of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Western Fisheries 

Research Center, 1935–2010 

U.S. Department of the Interior

U.S. Geological Survey

General Information Product 149
Front Cover: Left to Right

Top row: 

R. Rucker, G. Wedemeyer, and R. Ross measuring oxygen consumption of a fish exposed to DDT, 1966 

WFRC staff photograph,1965

B. Batts using an inverted microscope, 2007

Future Center Director R. Rucker with WFRC founder F. Fish and Government car, ca. 1937

Middle row:

WFRC founder F. Fish, ca. 1934

The Center’s first high-powered microscope, ca. 1962. Staff unidentified.

Parasitologist J. Uzman,1956

Lower row

The Center’s histology laboratory, S. Black, technician,1964

Center Director T. Parisot,1974

Center Director R. Rucker,1958

Center Director R. Rucker with Leetown Laboratory Director S. Sniezko and a government car, 1958 

Back Cover: Left to Right

First row: 

1. Immunologist G. Klontz, 1964

2. R. Rucker and S. Bernier, Winthrop National Fish Hatchery, 1956

3. Ma. M. Penaranda, Visiting Scientist, Philippines, ca. 2009

4. Backpack electroshocking, Kenai River fish genetics study, ca. 1980. Unidentified staff

Second row:

1. Bacteriologist A. Ross and Virologist T. Parisot, 1958

2. Center Director F. Shipley, 1995

3. CRRL Director J. Petersen, 2005

4. Center Director A. Fox, 1978

Third row:

Virologist D. Amend, 1966

Center Director L. Thorsteinson, 2003

Lower Elwha Dam before removal, ca. 2012
Seventy-Five Years of Science— 

The Story of the U.S. Geological Survey’s 

Western Fisheries Research Center

By Gary A. Wedemeyer

General Information Product 149

U.S. Department of the Interior

U.S. Geological Survey
U.S. Department of the Interior

SALLY JEWELL, Secretary

U.S. Geological Survey

Suzette M. Kimball, Acting Director

U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia: 2013

For more information on the USGS—the Federal source for science about the Earth,

its natural and living resources, natural hazards, and the environment—visit 

http://www.usgs.gov or call 1–888–ASK–USGS

For an overview of USGS information products, including maps, imagery, and publications,

visit http://www.usgs.gov/pubprod

To order this and other USGS information products, visit http://store.usgs.gov

Suggested citation:

Wedemeyer, G.A., 2013, Seventy-five years of science—The U.S. Geological Survey’s Western 

Fisheries Research Center: U.S. Geological Survey General Information Product 149, 44 p.

Any use of trade, product, or firm names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply 

endorsement by the U.S. Government.

Although this report is in the public domain, permission must be secured from the individual 

copyright owners to reproduce any copyrighted material contained within this report.

 
iii

Preface

As of January 2010, 75 years have elapsed since Dr. Frederic Fish initiated the pioneering 

research program that would evolve into today’s Western Fisheries Research Center (WFRC). 

Fish began his research working alone in the basement of the recently opened Fisheries 

Biological Laboratory on Lake Union in Seattle, Washington. WFRC’s research began under the 

aegis of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and ends its first 75 years as part of the U.S. 

Geological Survey with a staff of more than 150 biologists and support personnel and a heritage 

of fundamental research that has made important contributions to our understanding of the 

biology and ecology of the economically important fish and fish populations of the Nation. 

Although the current staff may rarely stop to think about it, WFRC’s antecedents extend 

many years into the past and are intimately involved with the history of fisheries conservation in 

the Western United States. Thus, WFRC Director Lyman Thorsteinson asked me to write the 

story of this laboratory “while there are still a few of you around who were here for some of the 

earlier years” to document the rich history and culture of WFRC by recognizing its many 

famous scientists and their achievements. This history also would help document WFRC’s 

research ‘footprint’ in the Western United States and its strategic directions. Center Director 

Thorsteinson concluded that WFRC’s heritage told by an emeritus scientist also would add a 

texture of legitimacy based on personal knowledge that will all-to-soon be lost to the WFRC and 

to the USGS. The WFRC story is important for the future as well as for historical reasons. It 

describes how we got to the place we are today by documenting the origin, original mission, and 

our evolving role in response to the constantly changing technical information requirements of 

new environmental legislation and organizational decision-making. 

The WFRC research program owes its existence to the policy requirements of Federal 

conservation legislation originating with the construction of Grand Coulee Dam in 1933. The 

research program was shaped by laws enacted in subsequent years such as the Federal Water 

Pollution Control Act (1972), National Environmental Policy Act (1973), Endangered Species 

Act (1974), and Northwest Power Planning Act (1980), to name only a few. The WFRC has not 

been constrained by direct management or regulatory responsibility for a particular fishery (such 

as providing sustainable catch limits data to a resource management structure). Thus, WFRC has 

been able to concentrate on scientific pursuits and information needs required by contemporary 

environmental legislation. Over the years, we have pioneered in several important areas of 

fisheries research including the diagnoses and control of diseases in economically important fish, 

effects of environmental alterations on the physiological quality and survival of Pacific salmon 

released from federal mitigation hatcheries, applications in biotelemetry, and the bioenergetics of 

predator-prey interactions in the Columbia River.

The WFRC of today is a widely distributed organization in the Western United States. 

Knowledge of the historical connections and accomplishments of our predecessors is important 

beyond the sense of pride and unity it instills in the WFRC family of today. For example, a 

discerning reader will note the evolution of WFRC’s research from a single disciplinary focus 

(early era—hatchery disease problems), to multiple disciplines (middle to late era—species, 

populations, habitats; threatened and endangered species), to the present era (multidisciplinary 
iv

and with increasing process focus). For the benefit of the current WFRC staff, more emphasis 

has been placed on the early years rather than on the present day because people are quite

naturally more familiar with the recent past than with the research done during the first decades 

of WFRC’s existence.

By every rational measure, the WFRC has evolved into a fisheries research organization 

well positioned to provide the biological information needed to support the continued 

conservation and management of our Nation’s living aquatic natural resources. The high 

standard of excellence that connects WFRC’s past to our present research program provides a 

firm foundation on which to base the work yet to be done. 

In another 75 years, WFRC will undoubtedly be a very different place than it is today, but 

its evolution will be forever rooted in the story of the research and of the people related here. 

More about the diverse fisheries research projects WFRC scientists are conducting today 

is available at WFRC’s website: http://wfrc.usgs.gov/. 

Gary A. Wedemeyer

Senior Scientist Emeritus

October 2012 
v 

Contents

Preface .......................................................................................................................................................iv 

Chapter 1. 1871: Roots of WFRC — The U. S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries ................................... 1 

Chapter 2. 1950: An Independent Laboratory ............................................................................................ 7 

Chapter 3. 1974–1977: The Transitional Years........................................................................................12

Chapter 4. 1978–1994: Expansion and a State-of-the Art Facility............................................................15

Chapter 5. 1995–2003: Reorganization and the USGS Era Begins.........................................................25

Chapter 6. 2003–2010: The WFRC Today...............................................................................................30

Conclusion..................................................................................................................................................36

Epilogue......................................................................................................................................................37

Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................................................37

Appendix 1. The Center Research Managers and Administrative Support Staff......................................39

Appendix 2. The NBS Era—A Biological Survey for the Nation ...............................................................42
vi

This page left intentionally blank
1 

Chapter 1

1871: WFRC’s Roots — The U.S. Commission of Fish 

and Fisheries

The year was 1871 and the Civil War only recently ended when, due to growing concerns 

about the declining fisheries of the east coast and Great Lakes, Congress passed legislation 

creating the Nation’s first natural resource conservation agency, the U.S. Commission of Fish 

and Fisheries. War hero Ulysses S. Grant was President and he appointed Smithsonian Director 

Spencer Fullerton Baird1 (a founding member of the fledgling American Fisheries Society) to 

head up the new agency. With a budget appropriation of $5,000, Congress directed the U.S. Fish 

Commission, as it soon came to be called, to: 

“Investigate the causes of decrease in the supply of useful food-fishes of the United States, 

and determine and employ such measures as may seem best calculated to stock or restock 

the waters of the rivers, lakes and the sea.” 

As a scientist, Baird was a contemporary of Louis Agassiz, T.H. Huxley, and Charles 

Darwin. Like them, he was a man of great vision and his first report2 to Congress shows how 

quickly he worked out the complex factors that were causing the Nation’s economically 

important fish populations to decline. Baird listed the following. 

1. Decrease or disappearance of food items of commercially important fish populations, 

2. Migration of fishes to other localities, 

3. Fish diseases and adverse environmental changes such as water temperature and dissolved oxygen, 

4. Predation, 

5. Man’s activities such as pollution, overfishing, or the use of improper gear.

Today, some 140 year later, Baird's analysis remains as accurate as it was then and his 

vision continues to influence fisheries conservation work. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 

recently named a Great Lakes research vessel the M/V Spencer Fullerton Baird in his honor. 

During the first few years of the U.S. Fish Commission’s existence, Baird and his 

assistant George Brown Goode did much of its research themselves. Working during the summer 

field season out of a small fisheries laboratory they built at Wood’s Hole Massachusetts, a 

former New England Whaling port, Baird and Goode investigated the distribution, spawning, 

rate of growth, diseases, and prey of Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) and other declining food 

fishes along the New England coast.3 They also began work on methods for the artificial 

propagation of these species. Millions of eggs were collected each year, incubated in hatcheries, 

 

1 Madison, Mark, 2009, Spencer Fullerton Baird—Eddies—Reflections on Fisheries Conservation 2 (special issue): 

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Washington D.C.

2 Baird, S.F., 1873, Report of the Commissioner for 1871–1872: U.S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries—Part 1, 

U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington D.C.

3 Baird died at the Woods Hole research station in 1887 at the age of 64.
2 

and the young released in an effort to restore their former abundance. At that time, the great 

fisheries of the Pacific Coast, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Territory of Alaska were virtually 

unmapped and awaited exploration and study by U.S. Fish Commission scientists.

In 1872, in response to a resolution by the fledgling American Fisheries Society, 

Congress appropriated $15,000 and directed the U.S. Fish Commission to begin rebuilding 

declining fish populations by transplanting fish throughout the country. Prominent fish culturist 

Livingston Stone, one of the founders of the American Fisheries Society, was named Deputy 

U.S. Fish Commissioner and assigned to establish a freshwater fish hatchery in California. Stone, 

who had just published his classic text “Domesticated Trout”, was also assigned the task of 

transporting fish across the continent by railroad. Large numbers of American shad (Alosa 

sapidissima) and striped bass (Morone saxatilis) were transported from the Atlantic to the Pacific 

coasts in aquarium railroad cars that Stone had designed, while Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus

spp.) and trout (Salmo spp.) were hauled from the west coast to eastern streams. Passengers were 

hired to crank the hand operated aeration pumps. Although these early fish transplant efforts are 

now considered unwise, American shad and striped bass populations adapted well to the Pacific 

coast and currently support a sizeable recreational and, at times, even a small commercial 

fishery.

In 1879, Congress directed the U.S. Fish Commission to conduct a comprehensive survey 

of the fish and fisheries of the Nation as part of the 1880 U.S. census.4 Director Baird asked

legendary zoologist David Starr Jordon, then president of Indiana University, to organize and 

head up a team of experts to conduct this pioneering national biological survey. Jordan and his 

graduate student Charles H. Gilbert took leave from Indiana University and personally conducted 

stream surveys from southern California to Vancouver Island, B.C., to document the fishes of the 

west coast. The inventories and reports generated by these surveys provided a wealth of 

information about the life histories of these species and records of their exploitation that are still 

used today.5 In 1879, Congress also created the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to investigate

the geology and mineral resources of the vast new lands added to the United States by the 

Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican-American War. Few would have predicted that some 90 

years later, Congress would transfer the fisheries research conducted by the U.S. Fish 

Commission into the USGS.

In 1891, soon after the last of Jordan and Gilbert’s original biological surveys had been 

published, Jordan was appointed President of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and 

Gilbert joined him as head of the zoology department. In 1903, the U.S. Fish Commission was 

renamed the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries and tasked with determining the cause of the declining 

Alaska salmon fishery. President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Jordan and Gilbert to head up 

this work and a few years later the Bureau established a Stanford Pacific Fishery Investigations 

(SPFI) group at Stanford University with Gilbert as Chief Scientist.6

 In subsequent years, Jordan, 

 

4 The 1880 census data had to be compiled by hand and it took so long (7 years) that the U.S. Census Bureau 

contracted inventor Herman Hollerith to build a tabulating machine to be used for the 1890 census. Hollerith 

designed a cardpunch machine that was so successful that the results of the 1890 census took only 1 year to tabulate. 

In 1896, he started “The Hollerith Tabulating Machine Company” and began marketing his invention. In 1924, the 

Hollerith Tabulating Machine Company was renamed the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). The 

rest... is history.

5 Jordan, D.S., and Gilbert, C., 1887, The salmon fishing and canning interests of the Pacific coast, in Atkinson, C., 

1988, Fishery studies on the U.S. Pacific Coast 1887–1931: Marine Fisheries Review, v. 50, no. 4, p. 95–97.

6 Gilbert died in 1928 at the age of 68. In 2008, Gilbert’s grandson established the Gilbert Endowed Professorship at 

the University of Washington, a longtime partner of WFRC in fisheries research. The distinguished ichthyologist, 

Theodore Wells Pietsch III was the initial occupant. 
3 

Gilbert, and their SPFI colleagues became the first to use fish scales to determine the age of 

salmon, did pioneering work on tagging to study Alaska salmon migrations, and proved the 

‘home stream’ theory of returning adults. 

In 1931, the personnel and equipment of the SPFI group were transferred to the newly 

completed Fisheries Biological Laboratory in Seattle (popularly known as the “Montlake 

laboratory”). Research at the Seattle facility initially focused on fisheries issues caused by the 

new dams being construction on the Columbia River. At that time, Rock Island Dam had already 

been built and construction on Bonneville Dam and the Grand Coulee Dam was about to begin. 

Due to its 550-foot height, a fish ladder was precluded at Grand Coulee Dam thus 

preventing several important runs of salmon from returning to their native spawning streams 

upstream of the dam. To mitigate this loss of habitat, salmon hatcheries were built on Columbia 

River tributaries such as the Methow River, the Entiat River, and Icicle Creek near Leavenworth, 

Washington. This so-called Grand Coulee Fish Maintenance Project (GCFMP) was the first 

major hatchery program designed to compensate for hydroelectric development in the Columbia 

River Basin. The GCFMP was destined to play a vital role in shaping the origins and future of 

the yet unborn Western Fisheries Research Center (WFRC). 

The U.S. Bureau of Fisheries (Bureau) Hatchery Division and Research Division (then 

called the Division of Scientific Inquiry) shared in the management of the GCFMP. The 

Hatchery Division was responsible for operating the Grand Coulee project mitigation hatcheries 

and for trapping returning adult salmon at the Rock Island Dam and transporting them to streams 

downstream of Grand Coulee Dam. The headquarters of the Hatchery Division’s Western 

division was at the new Montlake laboratory with Al Kemmerich as superintendent. In 

November 1934, the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries brought in Dr. Frederic Forward Fish from its 

experimental hatchery at Leetown, West Virginia, to head up a newly established Consulting 

Fish Disease Service, which Dr. Fish himself had earlier proposed. An announcement by Chief 

of Research Elmer Higgins7

 in the 1935 issue of the Progressive Fish-Culturist (now the North 

American Journal of Aquaculture) explains: 

The Division of Scientific Inquiry, U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, 

in carrying out the purposes of Congress to discover how 

great a diminution of food and game fishes of the United 

States has occurred, what the causes may be, and what 

remedial measures may be proposed, has established a 

Consulting Hatchery Disease Service. Two pathological 

laboratories will be maintained by the Bureau, one at 

Washington D.C. under the direction of Dr. H. S. Davis, 

and one at Seattle Washington, under Dr. Frederic F. Fish. 

The service will be limited to production hatcheries, 

federal, state, and private. The accompanying article8 by 

Dr. Fish, to whom much credit is due for proposing the 

establishment of the Hatchery Disease Service, explains the 

operation, character and benefits to be derived. 

 

7 Higgins was the third of David Starr Jordan’s students to play an important role in the predecessors of the WFRC. 

The others were Willis Rich and W.F. Thompson.

8

 Fish, F.F., 1935, The Bureau of Fisheries Disease Service: The Progressive Fish-Culturist, v. 8, p. 9–12.

WFRC founder Frederic F. Fish, 

ca. 1945.
4 

The WFRC research program can therefore directly trace its origins to 1935, 75 years 

before the time of this writing — to a man and his dream at the very depth of the Great 

Depression, Dr. Frederic F. Fish. Dr. Fish had done notable work for the Bureau's Division of 

Scientific Inquiry (Research Division) solving fish disease problems in the eastern United States, 

including issues with Atlantic herring disease mortality in the Gulf of Maine and ulcer disease of 

trout at the Bureau’s Cortland, New York, hatchery. Fish convinced his superiors that he was the 

one to send out to Seattle to develop methods to control the hatchery disease problems that were 

limiting the success of the Grand Coulee Fish Maintenance Project. The consulting hatchery 

disease service he originated was the antecedent of the WFRC of today. 

Fish’s research program got off the ground in early 1935, shortly after he arrived at the 

Monlake laboratory in November of 1934. His first laboratory consisted of a small basement 

room at the Montlake facility with six aquaria where fish disease treatments could be tested 

under controlled conditions. Fish soon designed and built a second laboratory in another 

basement room and supplied it with an autoclave for bacteriological studies, sectioning 

equipment for histological work, and supplies and equipment for water chemistry analyses. 

Needing an assistant and more space, Fish hired Robert R. Rucker who built another 

experimental wet laboratory at the nearby University of Washington Fisheries Building and 

equipped it with sixteen 4-foot troughs supplied with heated or regular dechlorinated city water. 

Rucker then built a small satellite laboratory at the Quilcene National Fish Hatchery where 

mortality from fish parasite diseases had long been a chronic problem. Here, the experimental 

disease treatments developed at the Montlake laboratory could be tested under production 

conditions. 

Fish and Rucker soon established a second satellite laboratory at the Leavenworth 

National Fish Hatchery with substations at hatcheries on the Entiat and Methow rivers. Here,

new and improved methods were developed to control environmental disease problems caused

by unfavorable water-quality conditions such as adverse temperature, low dissolved oxygen, and 

excess carbon dioxide and nitrogen gas. 

During their first few years working at the Montlake laboratory, Fish and Rucker 

identified and characterized the bacterial pathogens that cause furunculosis and ulcer disease and 

they soon became recognized authorities on fish disease problems in the Western United States. 

Their research findings resulted in immediate improvements in the health and survival of 

juvenile salmon released from 

the federal mitigation 

hatcheries. For example, 

current treatment protocols for 

using formalin, salt, copper 

sulfate, and other chemicals to 

control fungi, external bacteria, 

and protozoan parasites in 

salmon hatcheries were 

pioneered by Fish and Rucker. 

The early years of 

fisheries research at the 

Montlake laboratory were 

marked by the rapid expansion 

of biological knowledge and 

the development of a staff of 

very talented young scientists
5 

— Fred Fish, Robert Rucker, Richard Van Cleve, Roger Burrows and Lauren Donaldson, to 

name only a few. By 1939, for example, Fish and Rucker’s innovative research had gained 

national recognition and Newsweek Magazine published an article entitled “A Hospital for 

Fish.” The article characterized the Montlake laboratory as a fish hospital and the Quilcene Fish 

Hatchery Experimental Station as one of its wards.9 The WFRC evolved from the pioneering 

work of some very forward-looking biologists. 

In 1940, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt reorganized the government and the U.S. 

Bureau of Fisheries was merged with some wildlife biology work within the Department of 

Agriculture to form a new agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) under Harold 

Ickes,10 then Secretary of the Interior. The reorganization also established five regional offices 

around the United States. The Hatchery Division headquarters was moved from the Montlake 

laboratory to the newly established FWS Western Regional Office in Portland, Oregon. 

In 1941, the United States entered World War II and the Montlake laboratory research 

team began to disperse. Younger biologists were drafted, and others were reassigned to the 

Office of the Coordination of Fisheries or similar wartime agencies. Funding was kept to a 

minimum, the use of vehicles was curtailed, and supplies and equipment were increasingly 

difficult to obtain. Despite this, however, the Grand Coulee Dam Fish Maintenance Project team

continued to transplant salmon into new home streams and evaluate the results. During the early 

years of the war, Fish and Rucker were able to maintain their research on the practical 

application of promising fish-disease treatment chemicals. Formalin had proved effective for the 

control of some, but not all fish parasites so other chemicals such as Roccal and malachite green

were tested and treatment protocols developed. The use of sulfonamides had just started and 

some forms proved to be effective against certain bacterial fish diseases. During this time, 

Rucker made significant strides in the identification and culture of the bacterium Chondrococcus 

columnaris, responsible for columnaris disease and in 1943, he and Fish became the first to 

obtain the organism in pure culture. In 1943, Fish and Rucker published the first report of 

columnaris as a disease of cold-water fishes.11

In 1944, Rucker transferred to the FWS fisheries technology laboratory at College Park, 

Maryland, where he did bacteriological food safety research until the war ended in 1945. Shortly 

thereafter, Rucker returned to the Montlake laboratory in Seattle where he resumed work with 

Fred Fish in a new research group called the Pacific Coast Fish Cultural Investigations (PCFCI). 

Soon after Rucker’s return, Fish was transferred to PCFCI headquarters in Corvallis, Oregon, as 

Director. Rucker remained at the Montlake laboratory for a few more years doing pioneering 

work on the role of nitrogen supersaturation in gas bubble disease, using a Van Slyke blood gas 

apparatus he had modified for hatchery water supplies. In 1948, Rucker also was transferred to 

the PCFCI group in Corvallis where he was assigned to water pollution problems in the 

Willamette River system — effectively ending the initial era of fish disease research at the 

Montlake laboratory. 

Remarkably, in the 13 years WFRC founder Fred Fish and his assistant Robert Rucker 

devoted to their fish disease/fish cultural investigations at the Montlake laboratory, they 

published more than 50 scientific papers. Their research findings became the basis for the 

 

9

 A Hospital for Fish: Newsweek Magazine, January 2, 1939, p. 21–22. 

10 Harold L. Ickes was responsible for implementing much of President Roosevelt’s “New Deal” and was the father 

of Harold M. Ickes, Chief of Staff under President Bill Clinton, and advisor to Senator Hillary Clinton.

11 Fish, F.F., and Rucker R.R., 1943, Columnaris as a disease of cold-water fishes: Transactions of the American 

Fisheries Society, v. 73, p. 32–36.
6 

hatchery operations that were needed to ensure the continued survival of Pacific salmon 

populations in the United States and Canada. Some of the diagnostic and control methods Fish 

and Rucker developed are still in use today. A complete list of all WFRC publications from 

1935, when Fish and Rucker began their work, to the present day is available at the WFRC 

website http://wfrc.usgs.gov/. 
7 

Chapter 2

1950: An Independent Laboratory

In 1949, Fred Fish unexpectedly resigned as 

Director of the PCFCI group and took a research 

management position with the U.S. Public Health Service in

Texas.

12

Shortly thereafter, Rucker was reassigned to Seattle 

with a mandate to organize and direct an expanded fishdisease research program for the Pacific Northwest to be 

housed at the University of Washington’s College of 

Fisheries. The new organization was named the Western 

Fish Disease Laboratory (WFDL) and in 1950, it was 

elevated by the FWS to independent laboratory status, thus 

becoming the direct predecessor of the Western Fisheries 

Research Center of today. For his staff, Rucker selected 

specialists in fish parasitology (Joe Uzmann), bacteriology 

(A. John Ross), virology (Stanley and Margaret Watson), 

and histopathology (Wm. T. Yasutake). Gail R. Dryer was 

the first administrative officer. The space initially given to the 

group by the University included a large bacteriology 

laboratory; a wet laboratory with three large aquaria, sixteen 4-foot troughs supplied with heated 

and chilled dechlorinated city water; a shop; a dark room for photographic work; laboratory 

space for preparation of histological specimens; and 4 office/laboratory rooms for researchers in 

fish virology, bacteriology, parasitology, and histopathology. 

The fish-virology research program was based on Rucker’s 1949 discovery that a highly 

infectious, filterable, heat-labile agent was responsible for the severe mortalities then occurring 

among hatchery sockeye salmon in the Pacific Northwest. Stanley and Margaret Watson were 

hired to work on what was then being called the sockeye salmon virus disease. Today, we realize 

that these reports actually were early accounts of the virus disease now known as infectious 

hematopoietic necrosis (IHN). The Watson era predated by some years the availability of fish 

cell and tissue culture techniques. However, their immersion method of experimental infection is 

still widely used today and their discovery that warm water protects against IHN infections has 

been sustained. 

Another first occurred in 1950, when Rucker and his staff identified Ichthyosporidium as 

the causative agent of mortalities among hatchery rainbow trout, and Chinook, sockeye, and 

 

12 The life of Dr. Fish was remarkable in many ways. Starting in 1949, he put in a second career with the U.S. Public 

Health Service taking early retirement in 1960. He then put in a third career with the North Carolina Wildlife 

Resources Commission, retiring in 1970 as Assistant Chief of the Division of Inland Fisheries. Fish died in 1978. It 

is quite a story. 

Robert R. Rucker, Center Director 

1950–1973.
8 

coho salmon. Diseased stocks of fish in the western United States were subsequently destroyed. 

In 1950, Rucker also began work at the Winthrop National Fish Hatchery on bacterial kidney 

disease (BKD), to develop improved techniques for culturing the organism and methods for its 

control. In 1952, bacteriologist A. John Ross was hired to expand this line of inquiry with 

Thomas J. Parisot as his first assistant. Subsequently, Rucker, Ross, and Parisot became the first 

to identify the saltwater pathogen Vibrio anguillarum as the cause of large-scale mortality in 

rainbow and steelhead trout in freshwater and trace its origins to herring meal in the diet.13

Rucker and Ross also were the first to diagnose and treat Ichthyosporidium infections in 

freshwater salmonid fishes in the United States. 

In the early 1950s, Rucker had originally isolated a Gram-negative motile rod-shaped 

bacterium from rainbow trout with redmouth disease, a very serious problem in Idaho hatcheries. 

Bacteriologist A. John Ross subsequently classified this organism as a member of the 

Enterobacteriaccae and, working with the Centers for Disease Control, placed it in the genus 

Yersinia, and gave it the specific name ruckeri.

14 

In 1954, the Watsons left15 WFDL and Tom Parisot took over virology research. Parisot 

developed tissue culture techniques and continued studies on fish viruses, which included the 

sockeye and Chinook salmon viruses (today known as IHNV) and a rainbow trout virus (today 

known as IPNV).

By 1958, the rapidly growing College of Fisheries needed the space WFDL was using, so 

Rucker located a vacant warehouse at the nearby Sand Point Naval Air Station. The FWS 

provided the materials and Navy personnel remodeled the space into a well laid out laboratory 

including a shop, dark room, library/conference room, and animal quarters for fish immunology 

research. The wet laboratory contained 15 circular tanks, twenty 4-foot stainless steel troughs 

and 2 water tables—all supplied with well water and heated and chilled dechlorinated city water. 

In 1959, Joe Uzmann joined the staff to initiate a parasitology research program. Uzmann 

also collaborated with the North Pacific investigators at the Montlake laboratory in delineating 

the origin of salmon stocks using their parasites as geographic indicators. 

In 1960, histologist Wm. T. Yasutake transferred from the FWS Western Fish Nutrition 

Laboratory (WFNL) at Cook, Washington,16 to start a fish pathology diagnostic laboratory at the 

WFDL. His research assignment was to describe the histopathology of fish diseases of interest to 

the laboratory, identify etiologic agents, and confirm the provisional diagnoses of hatchery 

biologists. Yasutake was one of the first scientists to recognize hepatoma (liver cancer) in a 

population of hatchery-reared rainbow trout and he helped trace the disease to an aflatoxin 

produced by the mold Aspergillus flavis growing on fish diet ingredients during storage—another 

first for WFDL. Yasutake later became the first American to be awarded a doctorate by the 

Faculty of Fisheries, University of Tokyo. His classic “Microscopic Anatomy of Salmonids: An 

 

13 Rucker, R.R., 1959, Vibrio infections among marine and fresh-water fish: Progressive Fish-Culturist, v. 21, p. 22–

25.

14 Ewing, W.H., Ross, A.J., Brenner, D.J., and Fanning, G.R., 1978, Yersinia ruckeri sp. nov., the redmouth (RM) 

bacterium: International Journal of Systematic Bacteriology, v. 28, p. 37–44.

15 Stan Watson joined the staff of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in 1957 and in 1974, he founded a 

successful biologics company to market his patented Limulus amebocyte lysate assay (LAL) to detect bacterial 

endotoxins in pharmaceuticals required to be pyrogen free. Watson died in 1995.

16 The WFNL was closed in 1975 and the facility currently is occupied by WFRC’s Columbia River Research 

Laboratory.
9 

Atlas” was published in 1983 and quickly became a standard reference work that is still in use 

today.17

Additionally, 1960 was also the year Rucker organized a small round-table discussion in 

the laboratory conference room to exchange ideas about fish disease problems of mutual interest 

to hatchery biologists and fish disease researchers in the western United States. About 10 state 

and federal biologists attended the initial meeting including the late Jim Wood and Dick 

Westgard (Washington Department of Fisheries), Joe Wales (Oregon Fish Commission), Harold 

Wolf and Bob Toth (California Fish and Game), and the WFDL staff. This meeting turned out to 

be a significant event that was subsequently recognized as the first working session of the 

Western Fish Disease Conference. Today, this conference is convened annually and attracts 

hundreds of fishery professionals. 

In 1963, veterinary pathologist G.W. Klontz joined the WFDL research team to initiate 

much needed work on fish immunology and develop vaccines against diseases such as

furunculosis in rainbow trout. Klontz, assisted first by Dennis Crouch and then by Douglas

Anderson, also collaborated with A.J. Ross in conducting bacteriological research on enteric 

redmouth disease (ERM), caused by the gram-negative bacterium Yersinia ruckeri. At the time, 

this disease was a very serious factor limiting the success of the Idaho commercial aquaculture 

industry. Klontz and Ross were the first scientists to develop an effective experimental vaccine 

against this agent. Klontz and Anderson also did much of the original work on the unique 

immune system of salmonids and were the first to describe precipitating antibody in rainbow 

trout. The fact that these cold-blooded animals could produce large amounts of a circulating 

tetrameric, IgM antibody was an important milestone in fish immunology. Klontz and Anderson 

also made the first application of immunoflourescence in fish disease research using rabbit 

antibodies against the pathogens in the assay. In the 1960s, few fishery scientists were willing or 

capable of drawing clean heart blood and processing the sera for the valuable antibody needed 

for diagnostic assays. 

By the early 1960s, pesticides had become a serious national environmental concern and, 

in the Pacific Northwest, an issue that connected fish to forests and agriculture. Fish toxicity 

problems were caused by aerial spraying of farms, orchards, and forests; disposal of excess 

material; and equipment washing. However, water samples collected after a fish kill had 

occurred sometimes showed no evidence of the suspected pesticide. To address such problems, 

Gary A. Wedemeyer was stationed at WFDL, in 1965, as a field representative of the FWS Fish 

Pesticide Research Laboratory in 

Denver, Colorado. He was tasked with

developing the methods, concepts, and 

standards needed to identify and 

quantify biological effects of pesticides 

on west coast fishery resources, and to 

establish safe exposure limits to protect 

the aquatic environment. Wedemeyer’s

research was among the first to 

document the limited metabolic 

pathways available for the 

biodegradation of DDT in the aquatic 

environment. 

 

17 Yasutake, W.T., and Wales, J.H., 1983, Microscopic anatomy of salmonids—An Atlas: U.S. Fish and Wildlife 

Service Resource Publication 150, Washington D.C.

The Western Fisheries Research Center, ca. August 1965.
10

During 1960s, organic mercurials were often 

used to control external bacterial infections in 

hatchery salmonids and questions were being raised

about their safety. Accordingly, Rucker hired Donald 

F. Amend in 1965 to evaluate mercury uptake by 

hatchery fish treated with these compounds. The 

effect of Amend’s research was immediate and lead 

to the abandonment of mercury compounds for 

treating fish diseases. 

In 1968, WFDL virologist Tom Parisot was 

appointed assistant director of the new Fish Pesticide 

Research Laboratory then under construction by the 

FWS in Columbia, Missouri. Having completed his 

mercury uptake work, Don Amend then assumed

Parisot’s research projects on the Oregon Sockeye 

Virus (OSV) and the Sacramento River Chinook 

Disease Virus (SRCDV). Amend compared these

agents with the previously isolated sockeye and 

Chinook salmon viruses and determined that all three 

produced similar pathologic changes in tissue culture 

cells, and that the diseases had certain other features 

in common as well. Because the renal blood-forming 

tissues were the specific target, Amend, Yasutake, and Meade proposed the name ‘infectious 

hematopoietic necrosis’ in their 1969 seminal publication.18 The viruses of Oregon sockeye 

disease, Chinook salmon virus disease, and IHN soon became recognized as one entity and the 

name IHN stuck. Amend’s subsequent research findings on preventing transmission of the IHNV

by iodophor disinfection are still in use today as a standard hatchery practice. 

Parisot’s departure also brought about Gary Wedemeyer’s reassignment to the WFDL 

staff. Wedemeyer was tasked with broadening his pesticide toxicology research to include 

developing concepts, methods, and standards for determining the physiological tolerance limits 

of fish and fish populations to the stress of environmental alterations in general. These 

experiments were of a landmark nature because they led to a new understanding of the physical, 

chemical, and biological conditions during freshwater rearing required to improve the health, 

physiological quality, and early marine survival of juvenile salmonids released from federal 

mitigation hatcheries. Wedemeyer’s research findings on the physiological stress of hatchery 

rearing conditions also soon became an important consideration for the fish disease 

diagnostician.19

In 1972, Klontz20 left WFDL for a position at Texas A&M University and Anderson 

assumed his research assignment, assisted by Kathy Stannes as his laboratory technician. That 

year Anderson also began work on his classic textbook “Fish Immunology,” part of the 6-volume 

series on fish diseases being edited by S.F. Snieszko and H.W. Axelrod. Anderson’s seminal 

 

18 Amend, D.F., Yasutake, W.T., and Mead, R.W., 1969, A hematopoietic virus disease of rainbow trout and 

sockeye salmon: Transactions of the American Fisheries Society, v. 98, p. 796–804.

19 Mitchell, A.J., 2001, Finfish health in the United States (1690–1969)—Historical perspective, pioneering 

researchers, and annotated bibliography: Aquaculture 196:347-438.

20 Dr. Klontz later joined the faculty of the University of Idaho where he finished out a distinguished career. He 

received the American Fisheries Society S.F. Snieszko Award in 1994 and died in 2000.

R.R. Rucker, Gary Wedemeyer, and A.J. 

Ross, ca. 1968, measuring effects of DDT 

exposure on the oxygen consumption of 

coho salmon. Seattle Times photograph, 

used by permission.
11

volume was published in 1974 just before he transferred to the FWS Eastern Fish Disease 

Laboratory in Leetown, West Virginia, where he finished out a distinguished career as Chief of 

Immunology and Biologics.21

After Andersen’s departure, Don Amend took over the WFDL immunology research 

program and, in cooperation with the biologics company Wildlife Vaccines, developed the first 

commercial vaccines for vibriosis and ERM. 

In 1973, Rucker retired22 and Wedemeyer was appointed interim acting Director. 

The years from 1950, when the WFDL was established as an independent laboratory, 

until Director Bob Rucker retired were very exciting in the history of the WFRC. They were 

marked by a very rapid expansion of new ideas critical to the continued survival of hatchery 

propagated anadromous and non-anadromous salmonid populations of the United States, Canada, 

Russia, Japan, and Europe. The accomplishments of this small research team earned them the 

respect and friendship of the international fishery biology research community. 

With an annual appropriation averaging less than $250,000, and a staff of five principal 

investigators, the Center produced more than 200 technical publications during the Rucker era. 

These papers are catalogued in the Center’s master publication list posted on the WFRC web site 

http://wfrc.usgs.gov/products/. 

 

21 Dr. Anderson received the American Fisheries Society S.F. Snieszko Distinguished Service Award in 1989 and 

retired in 1994.

22 Rucker received the American Fisheries Society S.F. Snieszko Distinguished Service Award in 1980. Rucker died 

in 1998 and was inducted into the AFS Fish Culture Hall of Fame posthumously in 2011.

The ‘WFRC’ Staff in 1966. From left: Tom Parisot, virologist; Robert R. Rucker, 

Director; Nell Nichols, clerk/typist; Don Amend, virology; Norma Busby, histology; Gary 

Wedemeyer, field representative, Fish Pesticide Laboratory, Denver, Colorado; Wm. T. 

Yasutake, histopathology; A. John Ross, bacteriology, G. Wm. Klontz, immunology; Reg. 

Morgan, fish culturist; Gail Dryer, office manager; Doug Anderson, immunology; and Jan 

Martin, bacteriology. 
12

Chapter 3

1974 – 1977: The Transitional Years

The Fish/Rucker years were truly the end of an era in that the 

early 1970s were marked by the passage of landmark environmental 

legislation such as the Clean Water Act, National Environmental 

Policy Act, and the Endangered Species Act that greatly expanded 

the technical information needed by the FWS for natural resource 

management. The mission of the WFDL was therefore broadened to 

include a wider range of fisheries and aquatic science and the 

laboratory was renamed the National Fisheries Research Center 

(NFRC). In late 1974, Thomas J. Parisot, a member of the FWS 

Directorate in Washington D.C., was appointed Center Director. 

Parisot immediately initiated a comprehensive review of the NFRC

research program and initiated innovative new biological research 

programs while retaining the historic core competencies in fish 

disease research that had made NFRC’s predecessor, the WFDL, a 

world leader. Parisot’s work thus laid the organizational and 

scientific foundation for what the WFRC has become today.

Marrowstone Marine Field Station

Parisot’s first initiative was to provide a seawater research capability — the Marrowstone 

Marine Field Station (MMFS) added in 1974. Here for the first time, biologists were able to

study young salmon under controlled conditions during their critical first few months after 

seawater entry and identify

environmental stress factors during 

freshwater rearing that limited early 

marine survival. 

The MMFS was originally 

established in 1972, on 5 acres of a 

surplus U.S. Coast Guard light house 

station at the northern end of 

Marrowstone Island, Washington, by 

Dr. John E. Halver, Director of the 

(then) FWS Western Fish Nutrition 

Laboratory at Cook, Washington. At 

that time, the MMFS facility consisted 

of an 1896 light keeper’s residence 

(converted into laboratory and office 

space), a garage (converted into a wet laboratory) and a boathouse (converted into a shop). 

Thomas J. Parisot, Center 

Director 1974–77.

The Marrowstone Marine Field Station, ca. 1973.
13

Clarence C. Johnson was the Biologist-in-Charge. Seawater initially was obtained from a slantwell drilled into the sand above the shoreline. The MMFS property and the staff were transferred 

to the NFRC in 1974; in 1975, Johnson designed and installed an improved seawater intake with 

an additional 3,200 square feet of wet laboratory space. 

Parisot's second initiative was to develop new research programs in fish 

genetics/population biology, and physiological ecology. John D. McIntyre and Gerald R. Bouck 

were hired as project leaders in 1974–75, and in 1977, Stan Smith was hired to assist with 

Bouck’s physiological ecology research. Smith soon transferred to MMFS to replace Clarence 

Johnson who had relocated to NFRC-Seattle to work with Wedemeyer in solving a smolt 

physiology problem that was limiting the survival of downstream migrants at the new FWS

Dworshak National Fish Hatchery in Idaho. 

Alaska Research Field Station23

Parisot’s third initiative was to establish an Alaska Research Field Station. By 1976, 

impending oil and gas energy development had provided an impetus for an expanded FWS 

research presence in Alaska, and NFRC Section Chief John D. McIntyre was dispatched to the 

FWS Area Office in Anchorage to lay plans for the new facility and for the research to be 

conducted. Carl V. Burger, who was just finishing a tour of duty as a federal field monitor for the 

Trans-Alaska Pipeline Project, was hired in spring 1976 as the field station's first employee. By 

late summer of 1976, McIntyre had selected fish geneticist Richard L. Wilmot, then at the FWS

Ecological Services office in Olympia, Washington, as field station chief. Wilmot’s expertise in 

fish genetics was key to filling a niche in Arctic and sub-Arctic fishery research—a niche where 

not much genetics research was being done except for a limited Alaska Department of Fish and 

Game effort in genetic policies for hatchery egg takes. 

In late 1976, the NFRC Alaska Field Station opened shop in a small office with an 

adjoining one-room laboratory on Northern Lights Boulevard in Anchorage with a secretary and 

two biologists—Burger and Wilmot. The station’s first project was a genetic survey of fishes 

(coregonids and grayling) on Naval Petroleum Reserve #4, near Barrow. There were plans for an 

oil extraction facility near Barrow and the FWS needed baseline information to assess potential 

environmental impacts. The Area Office provided the fly-outs from Barrow for field sampling as 

well as required field support (with FWS biologists Norval Netsch and Ed Crateau as float plane 

pilots). Over time, NFRC and Alaska Area Office biologists would conduct pioneering genetics 

and telemetry studies of Kodiak Island, Kenai River, and other salmon populations. 

Seattle Laboratory

In 1975, NFRC-Seattle microbiologist A.J. Ross retired24 and Rowan W. Gould was 

hired to carry on and expand Ross’s work on bacterial kidney disease (BKD) and other 

economically important bacterial diseases of fish. Gould’s work was innovative for its 

application of the “next-generation” research techniques of the emerging field of molecular 

biology being developed at that time.

 

23 Condensed from material originally written by Carl V. Burger, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Ret.).

24 Deceased, 2003.
14

In 1976, research virologist Don Amend left the NFRC to direct fish vaccine 

development for Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceuticals25 and Dan Mulcahy26 was hired to 

continue Amend’s pioneering work on the isolation and quantification of IHN virus in hatchery 

salmonids. Mulcahy immediately recruited Ronald J. Pascho27 as his assistant and together, they 

conducted a series of innovative studies on waterborne transmission of the infectious 

hematopoietic necrosis virus and its pathogenesis in sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka). 

In 1977, the Parisot28 era ended with his transfer to a research management position in 

the FWS Central Office in Washington D.C. Once again, Wedemeyer was appointed Acting 

Director, serving until late 1978. 

The 4 years of Parisot’s tenure were significant in the evolution of what would become 

the WFRC. The innovative new research areas Parisot developed and the research findings of his 

scientific staff provided much needed technical information to resource managers responding to 

the legislative mandates of the new environmental laws that were then being enacted. 

 

25 Tavolek Inc., was founded by Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceuticals. Amend later served as professor of fish 

pathology at the University of California–Davis and finished out a very productive career as Director of the 

Southeast Aquaculture Association in Ketchikan, Alaska. He retired in 1988.

26 Mulcahy transferred to the FWS National Wildlife Health Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin in 1986.

27 Retired, 2003.

28 Parisot retired in 1986 after holding several increasingly responsible positions in the FWS Central Office.
15

Chapter 4

1978 – 1994: Expansion and a State-ofthe-Art Facility

In 1978 Alfred C. Fox, then Chief of the FWS Ecological 

Services Division, was appointed Center Director.29 After 

evaluating the center's research program, Fox selected Clarence 

M. Johnson as his deputy. Once again, the mission of the NFRC

was broadened and new field stations were established. A major 

feature of the Center’s work during the Fox years involved 

expanded cooperation with other public fisheries agencies, 

universities, and non-governmental organizations. The 

Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units at the University of 

Washington and University of Idaho became especially valuable 

partners, with NFRC scientists supervising graduate student 

dissertation research, giving guest lectures and seminars, and 

teaching courses. 

Seattle Laboratory

In 1980, John D. McIntyre,30 the laboratory’s first Section 

Chief for fish ecology, hired Reginald R. Reisenbichler from the 

FWS Fisheries Assistance Office in Red Bluff, California. Working 

with Ted Bjornn,31 Idaho Cooperative Fisheries Research Unit, 

Reisenbichler and McIntyre quickly developed studies to determine 

the effects of hatchery supplementation on Idaho steelhead 

populations and other native species such as bull trout and cutthroat 

trout. In 1999, University of Idaho students Alan Bryne and Steve 

Rubin were hired to collaborate on Reisenbichler’s classic work on 

the genetic population structure of Olympic National Park and 

Columbia River salmonids. With the assistance of Kim Larsen, 

Steve Rubin, Mike Hayes, and Lisa Wetzel, Reisenbichler 

 

29 Fox had previously served for many years as FWS Cooperative Unit Leader at Montana State University and the 

University of Georgia. He retired from the NFRC in 1994 and died in 2011.

30 McIntyre transferred to the U.S. Forest Service (Boise) in 1990 where he finished out his career, retiring in 1994 

and died in 2012.

31 Deceased, 2001.

Alfred C. Fox, Center Director, 

1978–1994.

Reginald Reisenbichler, ca. 

2010.
16

established an otolith laboratory and began long-term studies of hatchery-wild fish interactions 

including effects on stock productivity. In later years, during the Thorsteinson era, 

Reisenbichler32 and his research team would do innovative research on the ecology of eelgrass

habitats in Puget Sound and its estuaries as well as important work on the life history of the 

anadromous bull trout. 

In 1983, Microbiologist Rowan W. Gould ended his innovative fish disease research 

work at the Center to become Director of the FWS Wellsboro, Pennsylvania Research 

Laboratory. Gould later went on to become Deputy Director of the FWS Pacific Region, Director 

of the Alaska Region, and in 2008, Deputy Director of the FWS.

Diane G. Elliott was hired in 1985 to continue Gould's seminal research on BKD in 

hatchery fish. Elliott collaborated with Ron Pascho and expanded these studies into pioneering 

work on the effects of stress factors such as transporting 

downstream migrant smolts around the dams on the Columbia 

River on BKD infection rates. Lynn (Chip) Applegate joined 

the Elliott/Pascho BKD research team in 1985, Connie 

McKibbon was hired in 1989, and Dorothy Chase joined in 

1993. In addition to their pioneering work on BKD in 

downstream migrant Columbia River smolts and in the Great 

Lakes, Pascho and Elliott made a series of lasting contributions 

to the detection and control of BKD by developing an enzymelinked immunosorbant assay (ELISA) diagnostic test to replace 

the traditional method of isolation and culture, and the 

broodstock segregation method of controlling BKD by 

preventing its vertical transmission. Today, the ELISA and a 

new polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay Pascho and Elliott 

developed are considered standard practice. Their chapter in the 

book “Molecular Diagnosis of Salmonid Diseases” has become 

a classic reference.33

After making significant contributions to the 

improvement of the seawater survival of anadromous salmonids 

released from federal mitigation hatcheries, Gerald Bouck34 left the Center in 1983 to take a 

Senior Fisheries Scientist position with the Bonneville Power Administration. Bouck was 

replaced by Percy Washington who transferred from the National Marine Fisheries Service 

(NMFS) Seattle Montlake laboratory.

 

32 Reisenbichler retired in 2008 and is currently a WFRC scientist emeritus. 

33 Pascho, R.J., Elliott, D.G., and Chase, D.M., 2002, Comparison of traditional and molecular methods for 

detection of Renibacterium salmoninarumin Cunningham, C.O., (ed.), Molecular diagnosis of salmonid disease: 

Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, p. 157–209. 

34 Received the American Fisheries Society Meritorious Service Award in 1997.

Diane Elliott with one of her 

Ikebana flower arrangement 

she often made for the WFRC 

staff to enjoy.
17

In 1983, Seattle Laboratory virologist 

Dan Mulcahy hired William N. Batts to aid in 

the isolation and quantification of IHNV in 

hatchery samples. In 1986, Mulcahy35

transferred to a virologist position at the FWS 

National Wildlife Health Laboratory and 

James R. Winton, then at Oregon State 

University, was hired to replace him. In 1988, 

when viral hemorrhagic septicemia (VHS) 

was first detected in North America, Winton 

and Batts were on the forefront of the 

diagnosis and performed many studies into 

rapid detection procedures involving DNA 

probes and PCR. Winton went on to build up a strong interactive team of principal investigators 

who not only maintained the already excellent fish disease research capability of the WFRC, but 

also improved it. The accomplishments of the fish disease research section are too many to list 

here, but they include pioneering work on the molecular biology of the infectious hematopoietic 

necrosis virus (IHNV), the viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus, 

Piscirickettsia salmonis, the first Gram-negative, intracellular 

bacterial pathogen isolated from fish and a significant cause of 

mortality in salmonids, BKD, and VHS in the Great Lakes, 

whirling disease (Myxobolus cerebralis), and infectious salmonid 

anemia virus (ISAV) in west coast anadromous fish populations. 

Winton went on to earn the AFS Snieszko Distinguished Service 

Award, and the Department of the Interior Meritorious Service 

Award and Distinguished Service Award—the only WFRC 

scientist ever to be so recognized. 

In 1985, ecologist John M. Emlen, then Director of the 

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Risk Assessment 

Division in Corvallis, Oregon, was hired to replace Percy 

Washington who had left to start a private consulting firm. Emlen 

soon became a leader in developing the theoretical underpinnings of developmental stability, a 

phenomenon based on the symmetry of organisms and how this symmetry can break down when 

organisms experience environmental or genetic impacts. He also did pioneering research on a 

new field-based methodology for studying populations called Interaction Assessment and wrote 

specialized software and field techniques for its implementation.36

In 1985, Assistant Director Clarence Johnson37 transferred to the FWS Washington 

Office and Stan Smith came to Seattle from the MMFS to replace him.

 

35 Mulcahy retired in 2003.

36 Emlen retired in 2005. 

37 Johnson finished out a notable career as FWS Biologist-In-Charge of chemical and drug registration activities 

with Federal Drug Administration, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

Johnson retired in 1997 and died in 2010.

William (Bill) Batts, ca. 2005.

James R. Winton, ca. 2010.
18

In 1986, Wm. T. Yasutake’s38 landmark book, The 

Microscopic Anatomy of Salmonids: An Atlas, was published. In 

preparation for more than 20 years, this atlas of fish histology 

quickly became a classic reference text. It was reprinted in 2005 

and still is in use today. 

In 1988, the Reagan administration appropriated initial 

funding for the design and construction of a modern laboratory 

building to replace the aging WWII warehouse that had housed the 

Seattle Center since 1958 and in 1990, Center Director Fox hired 

Allen Marmelstein from the FWS Hawaii Area Office to assist with 

the design preparations for this project. 

In 1992, Fish Health Research Team Leader Jim Winton 

hired Gael Kurath to begin research on the molecular biology of 

fish viruses and in 1994 Kurath hired Eveline Emmenegger as her

research associate. The Kurath-Emmenegger collaboration continued through 2007 with 

accomplishments such as a patent for a DNA vaccine against spring viremia of carp (SVC) and a 

virus isolate genetics database for IHNV, VHSV, and SVCV.

Columbia River Field Station

Among the most significant new research efforts initiated 

by Center Director Fox was the establishment in 1978 of a field 

station on the Columbia River. Earlier that year, the FWS

reorganized the National Reservoir Research Program (NRRP) and 

biologists William R. Nelson and Lance G. Beckman, then at the 

NRRP field station at Pierre, South Dakota, were reassigned to the 

NFRC and stationed at the FWS Fisheries Assistance Office in 

Vancouver, Washington. 

Fox tasked Nelson and 

Beckman with developing a 

research program to provide 

information needed by resource 

managers on fish populations in the 

impoundments behind the 11 major 

dams on the Columbia River. 

Nelson and Beckman were quickly 

successful in obtaining Bureau of 

Reclamation funding to study the distribution and abundance of 

fish populations in Lake Roosevelt, the reservoir behind Grand 

Coulee dam. Dennis Rondorf was the first biologist hired 

followed by Gerry Gray Anthony Nigro, and Richard Harper. 

Gray and Harper were stationed at Grand Coulee to begin the 

Lake Roosevelt research program under the supervision of Lance 

Beckman. Dennis Rondorf was stationed at the McNary National 

Wildlife Refuge (NWR) to conduct a related study on juvenile fall 

Chinook salmon in the reservoir behind McNary Dam. 

 

38 Yasutake retired in 1988 and is currently a Senior Scientist Emeritus at the Center. 

Dennis Rondorf, first biologist 

hired by the CRRL, with a 

Columbia River shad, ca. 2011.

Gael Kurath, Senior 

Research Virologist, ca. 2005.

Lance Beckman with his 

"Lab" assistant, ca. 1964
19

In 1980, Congress enacted the Northwest Electric Power Planning and Conservation Act. 

In response, the major emphasis of the Columbia River Field Station (CRFS) shifted to providing 

natural resource managers and regulators with an improved understanding of how hydropower 

systems affect the growth and survival of anadromous salmonids in the various freshwater 

habitats they use for spawning, rearing, and migration in the Columbia and Snake River basins. 

Although the research targeted hydropower related problems, the research also was designed to 

be applicable to fish passage and other issues in regulated rivers throughout the United States. 

Other environmental stress factors, such as fishing, agriculture, and hatchery practices also were 

studied to determine their effects on efforts to sustain native runs of salmon. This research began 

in 1981 with pioneering work by Dennis Rondorf on the bioenergetics of downstream migrant 

smolts and Gerry Gray on predator-prey relationships. Other early researchers on the predation 

project were Jean Beyer Rogers, Mike Faler, Hal Hansel, Doug Palmer, and Gary Sonnevil.

The CRFS research program grew rapidly and in 1982, the staff moved to the former 

FWS Western Fish Nutrition Laboratory at Cook, Washington, in the Columbia River Gorge east 

of Portland, Oregon. Soon after the move, the CRFS was 

renamed the Columbia River Research Laboratory (CRRL) and 

the research program continued to progress. 

In 1984, Gerry Gray transferred from CRRL to the FWS

Alaska Regional Office and Tom Poe39 was later hired from the 

FWS Great Lakes Fisheries Research Laboratory to succeed him. 

Poe and his research team (Mike Parsley, Matt Mesa, Craig 

Barfoot, Rip Shively, Steve Vigg, and Roger Tabor) continued 

CRRL’s now classic work on predator-prey relationships 

throughout the Columbia and lower Snake River basins with 

emphasis on the survival of salmon smolts. Today, the team’s 

research findings are considered the baseline for predator-prey 

studies throughout the country. 

In 1985, John Beeman was hired to work with Jerry 

Novotny on a Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) funded study rearing juvenile fall 

Chinook salmon in net pens in backwaters of the Columbia River to increase the number of 

adults returning to the John Day Reservoir. This research progressed into physiological 

measurements of smoltification, stress, and disease. Beeman’s research team currently is using 

radio and acoustic telemetry to monitor fish movements and describe factors affecting in-river 

mortality and dam passage of juvenile salmonids in several rivers in Washington and Oregon as 

part of a series of studies to improve downstream passage success. 

In 1987, Mike Parsley moved from the predator-prey project to the Columbia River white 

sturgeon project led by Lance Beckman. These pioneering biologists were the first to

• Delineate the early life history of the Columbia River white sturgeon,

• Find white sturgeon eggs in the reservoirs, 

• Capture age-0 white sturgeon in reservoirs, 

• Document predation on white sturgeon eggs by other fish, and 

• Publish a paper in which a geographic information system (GIS) was used to 

quantify habitat for fish. 

 

39 Poe retired in 1999 and served as a consultant for BioAnalysts Inc. for several years. He has been a member of the 

Northwest Power and Conservation Council and their Independent Scientific Advisory Board since 2003.

Mike Parsley, CRRL project 

leader for sturgeon and shad 

ecology, ca. 2005.
20

In 1991, Stan Smith40 transferred to the CRRL to assist 

Director Bill Nelson with his work on facilities expansion and to 

begin his own research on hatchery rearing practices. Dennis Rondorf 

also started his Snake River fall Chinook project in 1991 and Alec G. 

Maule was hired to continue the smolt condition for travel-time 

analysis project that Rondorf had initiated in 1987. Maule expanded 

Rondorf’s pioneering work on smolt physiology and in 1996 began 

his own classic gas bubble disease research and monitoring project. 

During Director Bill Nelson’s era (1978–94), CRRL fisheries 

science in the Columbia River Basin steadily expanded to address the 

information needs of the Army Corps of Engineers, Bonneville Power 

Administration, and other client agencies willing to support wellregarded USGS science. In 1988 for example, Nelson hired James H. 

Peterson to mathematically model predation as a factor limiting smolt 

survival in the Columbia River Basin. Peterson’s innovative research 

lead to bioenergetics and individual-based models of predation in a “normalized” Columbia 

River. Peterson was also a key driver in establishing the stream ecology research program, which 

since has become a mainstay of the laboratory. After Nelson41 retired in 1994, Jim Peterson was 

appointed Acting Director. After Beckman retired in 1994, Parsley became project leader and 

later the WFRC's geospatial technology coordinator for the Biological Resources Division of the 

U.S. Geological Survey. His “Digital Atlas of John Day Reservoir,” has become a classic 

reference work. 

Alaska Research Field Station42 

Research at the Alaska Research Field Station also was growing in importance in the late 

1970s. In 1978, the staff moved into larger quarters in the FWS Regional Office building in

Anchorage. This new laboratory and office space provided a unique set of research capabilities 

including an isolation room, genetics laboratory, and fish rearing tanks. The group branched out 

to research areas on Karluk Lake and the Kenai Peninsula and Dick Wilmot’s genetic analyses 

took on new relevance in the world of fisheries management and coast-wide stock assessment. 

Sockeye and Chinook samples were collected from Kenai Peninsula streams such as the Russian 

River, where there was a suspected remnant population of steelhead. Corky Hunger was detailed 

from the MMFS to help assemble the new laboratory and to assist with the genetic sampling 

effort in the field.

In 1979, Dave Wangaard and Aldo Palmisano were hired to provide the improved 

biological information needed on Chinook salmon spawning and rearing areas in the Kenai 

River, one of the most heavily used recreation areas in the State. Palmisano was given the 

responsibility of overseeing a population estimate of Chinook salmon in an upper Kenai River 

tributary (the Killey River). His innovative use of a portable electric weir led to some valuable 

scientific results and garnered high praise among Alaska Department of Fish and Game resource

managers.

43 

 

40 Retired, 1997 41 Deceased, 2007 42 Written by Carl Burger, January 2010.

43 Palmisano, A.N., and Burger, C.V., 1988, Use of a portable electric barrier to estimate Chinook salmon 

escapement in a turbid Alaskan river: North American Journal of Fisheries Management, v. 8, p. 475–480.

CRRL's Alec Maule, ca. 

2005.
21

In these early days (1979–80), Carl Burger developed radio-tagging techniques for Kenai 

River Chinook and coho salmon as a method to find their main stem spawning areas, pioneering

the use of radio telemetry to track fish movements in Alaska. Burger's44 finding that two distinct 

runs occurred, coupled with spatial, temporal, and genetic distinctness, led to widely recognized

publications on thermal adaptation and post-glaciation colonization strategies.

In the mid-1980s, a collaborative project was developed with the FWS Refuge Division 

to study the declining sockeye salmon run at Karluk Lake. Sockeye salmon are an important food 

source for the Kodiak Island brown bear population. Rowan Gould and Dan Mulcahy took tissue 

samples from migrating salmon in the Karluk River to determine the incidence of virus and 

bacterial diseases, Reg Reisenbichler designed a weir to evaluate the role of stickleback 

competition on sockeye growth rates, and Terry Terrell did core sampling to discern the role of 

marine-derived nutrients in lake productivity. Dick Wilmot ruled out genetics issues. 

From Karluk, Dick Wilmot's coast-wide genetics program advanced, along with some 

other research efforts for the National Park Service involving rainbow and sockeye salmon 

studies in Katmai National Park and Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. 

The Center’s direct role in Alaska ended in 1988 when all FWS studies were consolidated 

under a new research group in Anchorage with Angelo W. (Bill) Palmisano as Director.

Cooperation with NFRC continued, however. For example, Wedemeyer maintained an active 

working relationship with the Cooperative Fisheries Research Unit-Fairbanks (Dr. Jim Reynolds, 

Unit Leader) on the tolerance of fish to the environmental impacts of placer mining, and the 

redesign of highway culverts that were blocking the upstream migration of returning adult 

salmon. 

Reno Field Station

In 1985, the Center established an endangered speciesrecovery research field station in Reno, Nevada, under the 

leadership of G. Gayton (Gary) Scoppettone. Located within 

400 miles of about one-half of the Nation’s Endangered 

Species Act (ESA)-listed fishes, the mission of the station was

to provide biological information needed for the recovery of 

threatened and endangered “desert fish” populations in the 

Great Basin and Mojave Desert area of the western United 

States. Scoppettone, then at the FWS Reno Fisheries 

Assistance Office, had been working with the Center since 

1981 on the life history requirements of the endangered cui-ui 

(Chasmistes cujus) of Pyramid Lake, Nevada. This 

information was needed to provide legally defensible water

flow and temperature regimes to ensure the continued natural 

reproduction of this unique species in the Truckee River. After 

transferring to the NFRC staff, Scoppettone continued this work and, with the assistance of 

Howard Burge, began his pioneering recovery plan research that lead to the successful 

establishment of self-sustaining endangered Moapa Dace (Moapa coriacea) populations in the 

Moapa National Wildlife Refuge, Nevada, the first wildlife refuge acquired by the FWS for a 

fish species.

 

44 Carl Burger departed Alaska in 1996 to head up the FWS Abernathy Fish Technology Development Center. 

Burger served as president of the American Fisheries Society in 2000 and afterward appointed Director of the FWS 

Maine Fisheries Program Complex Office. He retired in 2006 and is presently a senior scientist with Smith-Root Inc. 

Reno Field Station Chief Gary 

Scoppettone, ca. 2005.
22

The definition of spawning and rearing habitat requirements of the Pyramid Lake cui-ui 

by Scoppettone and Mark Coleman (then at the FWS Fisheries Assistance Office) led to the 

important discovery that cui-ui (and larger suckers in the west such as the Lost River, shortnose, 

and June sucker) were much longer lived than previously believed—surviving in some cases as 

long as 50 years.45 The Reno Station's pioneering work with the Nevada Department of Wildlife 

is widely credited with preventing the extinction of the white river springfish, which had 

declined to only 20 individuals. Today, this species numbers more than 1,000. In 1988, 

Scoppettone hired Peter Rissler and Mark Coleman who began the endangered Klamath Lake 

sucker project that eventually evolved into the Center’s Klamath Falls Field Station. 

Since its founding in 1985, the Reno Field Station, under Scoppettone’s leadership, has 

continued to provide badly needed status surveys and critical information on the life history, 

population dynamics, and interspecific interactions of threatened and endangered species. To 

date, these surveys have been used for biological opinions, water management strategies, 

invasive species control measures, and the listing and recovery plans of more than 30 threatened 

and endangered fishes in the desert aquatic ecosystems of the Great Basin. 

Marrowstone Marine Field Station 

In 1980, under the leadership of Stan Smith and Gerald Bouck, the Marrowstone Marine 

Field Station (MMFS) was enlarged to enable the laboratory to pump as much as 200 gallons per 

minute of seawater from a depth of 40 feet. This allowed large-scale studies to be carried out 

under controlled conditions on the effects of environmental alterations during freshwater rearing

on the parr-smolt transformation and subsequent seawater survival of anadromous salmonids. A 

series of such studies were later conducted with the BPA, EPA, NMFS, Washington Department 

of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) and the University of Idaho. In 1981, Ted Bjornn and Christine 

Moffitt of the University of Idaho began their groundbreaking 8-year study at MMFS to 

determine how feeding juvenile salmonids erythromycin to control BKD during hatchery rearing 

affected their subsequent smoltification and early marine survival. A small travel trailer brought 

from Idaho served as living quarters. 

From 1982 to 1992, pioneering work on the culture of Pacific halibut (Hippoglossus 

stenolepis) was conducted at MMFS in cooperation with University of Washington School of 

Fisheries director Robert Stickney, the International Pacific Halibut Commission, and MMFS 

Biologist-in-Charge, Stan Smith. In 1984, Smith transferred to the Seattle laboratory to replace 

Clarence Johnson as Director Fox’s Deputy and Aldo Palmisano46 transferred from the Alaska 

Field Station as MMFS Field Station Chief. In 1987, Robin Schrock47 was hired as his principal 

biologist.

In 1988, Palmisano hired Nancy Elder, then a University of Idaho research associate 

working with Christine Moffitt and Ted Bjornn on the eythromycin project at MMFS. Elder’s 

first project was the WDFW collaboration with the Center on the effects of Chehalis River pulp 

mill and sewage treatment plant effluents on the smoltification and early seawater survival of 

juvenile spring Chinook salmon. 

 

45 Scoppettone, G.G., 1988, Growth and longevity of the cui-ui and other catostomids and cyprinids in western 

North America: Transactions of the American Fisheries Society, v. 117, p. 301–307. 46 Deceased, 2002

47 Schrock transferred to CRRL in 1991 where she managed several fisheries and water-quality studies. She later 

transferred to USGS in Reston, Virginia and in 2003, became the Assistant Fisheries and Aquatic Resources 

Program Coordinator. She is presently the Executive Director of the US Bureau of Reclamation Trinity River 

Restoration Project, Weaverville, California.
23

In 1991–92, the MMFS laboratory underwent an extensive ($4,000,000) renovation. 

Laboratory space and seawater pumping capacity were more than doubled and the water quality 

improved by installing a still deeper intake structure and an ultraviolet light (UV) treatment 

system. New equipment also provided temperature control of the freshwater and saltwater

supplies. 

In 1996, MMFS began cooperative work with Richard Kocan and Paul Hershberger at the 

University of Washington to characterize the effects of contaminants on marine species and life 

stages, in particular the effects of the Exxon Valdez oil spill on the susceptibility of Pacific 

herring (Clupea pallasii) exposed to the VHS virus, a potentially deadly pathogen of these fish. 

Subsequent work involved an investigation of diseases affecting populations of Puget Sound 

forage fish such as Pacific herring and Pacific sand lance (Ammodytes hexapterus)—important 

food sources for Pacific salmon, seabirds, and marine mammals. 

A State-of-the-Art Laboratory Facility

In 1988, funding for the design and 

construction of a new Seattle laboratory 

facility (and further renovation of the 

MMFS) sought by Congressman Norm 

Dicks (D-Washington) was approved by the 

Reagan administration. In 1990, Al 

Marmelstein transferred from the FWS 

Pacific Regional Office to assist Director Al 

Fox with the work required to finish 

planning and building the new Seattle and 

MMFS facilities. Research team leader Jim 

Winton took the lead in the design of the 

new laboratory, the second such facility 

Winton had developed. The facility included 

six artificial streams and an aquatic 

biosafety level 3 disease-containment 

facility with airlock entry.

Actual construction of the new Seattle Laboratory facility began in 1992. In 1993, while 

construction was still in progress, a new agency, the National Biological Survey (NBS), was 

established by the Clinton administration within the Department of the Interior (DOI; appendix 

1). In the resulting reorganization, the research divisions of the FWS, National Park Service, 

Bureau of Reclamation, and several other entities within the DOI were merged into the NBS. 

Under the NBS, the Center was renamed the Northwest Biological Science Center (NWBSC) 

and its mission was again broadened―this time to include all biological science disciplines with 

an emphasis on ecosystems research. 

Construction of the new WFRC headquarters and Seattle laboratory, with its state-of-theart research capability, was completed in 1994. The Seattle facility was designed to support the 

research needs of the FWS, and, after the USGS merger, still serves that agency as its primary 

partner.

Center Director Al Fox and WFRC founder Robert R. 

Rucker (Ret.) preparing to turn the first shovel of dirt 

at the groundbreaking ceremony for the new 

laboratory, ca. 1992.
24

Shown here is an artist conception of the new facility. Director Al Fox48 retired in 1994 

shortly after the facility was completed, as did long-time Administrative Officer Peggy Dixon. 

Deputy Director Al Marmelstein became Acting Director until he transferred to the NBS 

Regional Office in 1994. Gary Wedemeyer49 was given a temporary promotion to Center 

Director while a search was, once more, conducted for a permanent replacement.

 

48 Fox died in 2011.

49 Wedemeyer retired in 1998 and currently (2012) serves as Senior Scientist Emeritus. He received the American 

Fisheries Society Snieszko Distinguished Service Award in 1997 and the Department of the Interior Meritorious 

Service Award in 1998 for making lasting contributions to science. He was elected to the Northwest Fish Cultural 

Conference Hall of Fame in 2012 for his contributions to fisheries biology.
25

Chapter 5

1995 – 2003:Reorganization and the 

USGS Era Begins

In early 1995, Frank S. Shipley50 was selected as the new 

NWBSC Director and almost immediately, he and his staff were 

caught up in a major agency reorganization. In late 1995, DOI 

Secretary, Bruce Babbitt issued Secretarial Order 3185, which 

changed the name of NWBSCs parent agency, the politically 

troubled National Biological Survey, to the National Biological 

Service (NBS), based on the reasoning that the title “Survey” 

unnecessarily conjured up an image of government biologists 

searching for threatened and endangered species on private lands. 

Secretarial Order 3185 also instructed NBS employees not to 

work on private land without the owner’s permission. By early 

1996, NBS's political difficulties were taking their toll and the 

Wildlife Management Institute joined with five other conservation 

organizations in urging Congress to return NBS research biologists 

to their original agencies.

The issue finally was resolved by compromise. In 1996, 3 

years after its birth, Congress abolished the NBS, and transferred its employees into the U.S. 

Geological Survey (USGS). The former stand-alone agency would now become a division—the 

Biological Resources Division (BRD)—within the USGS. NBS Director Ronald Pulliam became 

Secretary Babbitt's Science Advisor for a few months and then returned to his former position at 

the University of Georgia’s Institute of Ecology. Assistant Director James Reichman had already 

resigned to become the Director of the new National Center for Ecological Analysis and 

Synthesis at the University of California, Santa Barbara. NBS Deputy Director Gene Hester 

retired.

Dennis Fenn became the first BRD Director in October 1996. Fenn was a veteran 

employee of the National Park Service and had served as the first Director of the NBS Western 

Regional Office in Seattle, Washington. After 3 years of almost continuous administrative 

turmoil, a BRD Director experienced in, and sensitive to agency cultures and procedures, 

together with a secure home in a veteran DOI agency, greatly assisted Center Director Shipley in 

his work to maintain the NWBSC at a high level of morale and productivity. 

Director Shipley quickly focused on the Center’s new role within the USGS, long 

renowned as the scientific arm of the Department of the Interior. In this new role, the Center’s 

 

50 A true renaissance man, Frank was also a talented musician, well remembered for his guitar playing and singing in 

the WFRC combo “Close Enough for Government Work.” Other members included Gael Kurath keyboard/vocals, 

and founders Lynn (Chip) Applegate guitar/vocals and Stewart Alcorn, drums.

Frank S. Shipley, Center 

Director, 1995–2003.
26

mission was realigned to fisheries and aquatic resources in the Western United States and in 

1997, Shipley gave the NWBSC its current name, the Western Fisheries Research Center 

(WFRC). Under Shipley’s leadership, the Center’s research was broadened to encompass larger 

ecosystem implications influencing fish and their habitats, and realigned to better focus on 

emerging environmental issues such as marine invasive species. In 2001, Shipley hired Lyman 

Thorsteinson, then at the USGS Western Regional Office, as his Deputy to assist with these 

efforts. Thorsteinson had conducted or managed marine ecological and fishery research in 

Alaska and along the Pacific coast for many years.

Several major environmental trends helped shape WFRC research during Shipley’s 

tenure. Climate change, invasive species, and water availability emerged as major environmental 

influences on fish and their habitats. The Clinton administration’s Pacific Salmon initiative 

influenced USGS strategic science planning and thus furthered interagency coordination efforts 

by the Shipley/Thorsteinson team.

In addition to his Deputy Director duties, Thorsteinson also led the Seattle Laboratory 

Fish Ecology research team and he tasked WFRC scientist Russell J. Rodriguez with developing

DNA markers to detect live invasive organisms being transported in marine ballast water tanks. 

These data were needed to enable state and federal regulators to determine if ballast water could 

be safely discharged from ships docked in coastal ports of the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere. 

Klamath Falls Field Station

Water allocation, especially in dry years, in the Klamath River Basin, Oregon, has long 

been a challenge that had gained national attention in federal and state natural resource planning. 

In 1988, the Lost River sucker (Deltistes luxatus) and the shortnose sucker (Chasmistes 

brevirostris) were listed as endangered species and water quality, quantity, and availability 

(influenced by human use and climate) were identified as major factors limiting their survival. 

However, the basin’s scarce water resources also were in demand by agriculture, municipalities, 

and recreationists and unbiased technical information needed by the Bureau of Reclamation, the 

FWS, and other agencies in the Klamath River Basin was lacking.

WFRC biologists Gary Scoppettone and Mark Coleman (Reno Field Station), and Mike 

Saiki (Dixon Duty Station) had been monitoring the endangered populations of Lost River and 

short nose suckers in Klamath Lake and surrounding tributaries on a part-time basis since the late 

1980s. In 1999, WFRC Director Shipley decided it was time to establish a permanent field 

station at Klamath Falls and selected Rip Shively from the CRRL to direct the new station. In 

2001, a FWS Biological Opinion on factors affecting the survival of two threatened sucker 

species in Upper Klamath Lake made the intensive collection of data on fish behavior, 

movements, and water quality a lasting requirement. In response, Scott VanderKooi transferred 

from the CRRL to determine patterns of habitat use and the effects of poor water quality on these 

populations. 

Under the leadership of Rip Shively, many of the projects on the life history, population 

dynamics, and behavioral ecology of fishes in lentic and lotic habitats within the Klamath Basin

were conducted jointly with other federal and state agencies and tribes and the Klamath Falls 

Field Station soon became the exemplar of research groups conducting such studies. 
27

Dixon Duty Station

Originally established in 1978 as a field station of the 

FWS Columbia National Fisheries Research Center, the Dixon 

laboratory became part of the California Water Science Center 

in 1993 when the NBS was created by the Clinton 

administration. In 1997, after the NBS had been abolished and 

its staff transferred into the USGS, all USGS fisheries 

expertise on the West Coast was consolidated under the 

WFRC and the Dixon Duty Station, under chief biologist 

Michael Saiki, became part of the WFRC. This new research 

capability gave the WFRC expertise in aquatic contaminants 

and added to its portfolio on desert fishes. The station’s close 

proximity to the rivers of the California central valley and the 

San Francisco Bay-Delta, and its working relationship with the 

California Cooperative Fishery Research Unit at Humboldt 

State University were added advantages. In turn, the affiliation 

with WFRC broadened the duty station’s mission to include research on the ecology and life 

history of threatened and endangered and other native species in California, the selenium 

problem at Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge, heavy metal pollution in the upper Sacramento 

River from acid-mine drainage, and assessing the tolerance of endangered suckers in Upper 

Klamath Lake to high pH and ammonia and low dissolved oxygen. 

In 2001, Barbara Martin joined Saiki at the Dixon Duty Station. Working with the FWS 

and NPS, Saiki and Martin researched threatened and endangered species such as the Santa Ana 

sucker, the California freshwater shrimp, and the desert pupfish. They also conducted surveys of 

poorly documented fish communities in small lagoons along the California coast and in former 

salt ponds in San Francisco Bay. Long-term monitoring of the Salton Sea to evaluate effects of 

selenium on fish populations also was done. In 2011, Saiki retired, Barbra Martin transferred to 

the Klamath Falls Field Station, and the Dixon Duty Station was closed.

Seattle Laboratory

In the late 1990s, Center Director Frank Shipley initiated cooperative studies with 

investigators from the Russian Academy of Sciences to address Pacific salmonid conservation 

interests in both nations. This research was part of an ongoing USGS collaboration with the 

Russian Academy of Sciences and Moscow State University to develop genetic techniques 

needed for an improved understanding of life history and geographic distribution of Pacific 

salmonids in the Russian Far East and the U.S. Pacific Northwest. Originally, the collaboration 

focused on the development of genetic marks for steelhead in Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia. 

Later, the WFRC and Moscow State University worked together to determine the genetic 

diversity of Dolly Varden char morphotypes (Salvelinus malma) in Kamchatka’s Kronotsky 

Biosphere State Reserve. Both resident and ocean going forms of these char occur in Kamchatka 

Rivers, such as the Zhypanova River, that are free from hatchery and watershed development. 

The natural setting of the Kamchatka Peninsula was ideally suited to provide environmental 

contrast to char in North American habitats that, except for Alaska, are not free of human 

influences.

In 2001, Shipley conducted field research in Kamchatka with Russian scientists working 

on the genetics and life histories of Kamchatka Peninsula rainbow trout and steelhead (O. 

mykiss), and char (S. malma, S. leucomaensis). Anadromous and resident forms of these genera 

Dixon Duty Station Chief, Mike 

Saiki, ca 2005.
28

occur in Kamchatka Peninsula rivers where there are no hatchery and watershed development 

influences and provide research opportunities pertaining to natural patterns in genetic diversity 

that do not exist in the United States. In 2003, Moscow State University biologist Serge Pavlov 

traveled to the WFRC to work with Shipley, Assistant Director Lyman Thorsteinson, and 

biologists Rusty Rodriguez and Carl Ostberg in genetic analyses of the samples collected. In 

2001, IHN virus was detected for the first time in Kamchatka sockeye salmon leading to an 

ongoing collaboration between WFRC researchers led by Gael Kurath, and Dr. Svetlana 

Rudakova, virologist for the Kamchatka Science Research Institutes on Fisheries and 

Oceanography. Genetic typing will be used to understand IHN epidemiology as it continues to 

emerge in Kamchatka.

During the Shipley years, the WFRC Fish Health Research Section also made important 

contributions to the management of severe outbreaks of IHNV that had been decimating Atlantic 

salmon reared in sea pen sites off British Columbia, Canada. In 2001–02, groundbreaking 

research by the Center’s fish disease research group showed that IHNV isolates from sites off the 

east coast of Vancouver Island were closely related to a common IHNV type that was 

widespread in Alaska, British Columbia, and Washington. This indicates that the IHN outbreaks 

in Atlantic salmon sea pens were caused by IHNV from local marine sources endemic to British 

Columbia. 

In 2001-02, WFRC’s Charlotte Rasmussen, Alison Colwell, and Jim Winton of the Fish 

Health Research Section also made considerable progress on methods for the control of whirling 

disease caused by the myxosporean protozoan Myxobolus cerebralis. This parasite infects both 

salmonid fish and a ubiquitous aquatic oligochaete worm, Tubifex tubifex and the complex hostparasite relationship has greatly hindered efforts to develop control strategies to prevent the 

spread of whirling disease. Determining size and the genetic 

composition of T. tubifex populations inhabiting streams and river 

systems provided a predictive tool for managers to assess the potential 

for M. cerebralis infection of worms, the levels of parasite 

proliferation from infected worms, and thus the severity of whirling 

disease in a watershed. These researchers also discovered that M. 

cerebralis is not likely to be passed directly from worm host to worm 

host without an intervening fish host stage. This supposition had long 

been assumed but never explicitly tested.

In 2001, George E. Sanders, DVM, joined the Fish Health 

Section to serve as WFRC’s Veterinary Medical Officer in a split 

appointment with the School of Medicine, University of Washington. 

Sanders immediately began development of an infectious disease 

model at the Seattle Laboratory using zebra fish (Danio rerio) and 

conducted research at the MMFS on disease ecology and the role of 

Ichthyophonus in the decline of Chinook salmon in the Yukon River, Alaska. 

In 2002, the National Science Foundation provided funding for MMFS staff scientist 

Russell J. Rodriguez and University of Washington collaborator Regina Redman to join an 

international team of scientists researching microbial ecology in the Antarctic at the McMurdo 

International Research Station. Although microbial ecology is of paramount importance to the 

health and dynamics of fish and wildlife communities, little is known about the roles of most 

microbial organisms in soil food webs. Through this work, the USGS obtained critical expertise 

in microbial ecology and soil chemistry. Additionally, the USGS began research in connecting 

soil activities with habitat restoration efforts, the spread of invasive plant species, and species 

Veterinary Medical 

Officer George Sanders, 

ca. 2010
29

adaptation to climate change. The work also advanced aquatic research projects at WFRC that 

focused on plant adaptation, habitat restoration, food web integrity, and species interactions. 

Marrowstone Marine Field Station

In 1998, the water system at MMFS was upgraded by the addition of sand filters, which, 

in conjunction with the existing UV system, provided premium quality pathogen-free seawater.

The old lighthouse building was renovated as housing for visiting scientists conducting research 

on forage fish, rockfish, marine fish diseases, and the treatment of marine ballast water to 

inactivate invasive species. In 2001, WFRC received the first installment of Congressional 

funding for the research and development of treatment systems to inactivate invasive species 

carried in the ballast water of commercial ships. In response, cooperative research was initiated

between WFRC and its partners to make the MMFS a ballast water treatment, testing, and 

certification center. Important progress also was made at MMFS on the role of disease factors 

such as Ichthyophonus and viral hemorrhagic septicemia in the decline of Pacific herring 

populations in Prince William Sound, Alaska (Exxon Valdez oil spill) and in Puget Sound. 

Columbia River Research Laboratory

In 1995, James G. Seelye, then Chief of the Hammond Bay Field Station of the FWS 

Great Lakes Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was appointed Director of the Columbia River 

Research Laboratory (CRRL). In 1999, Seelye hired Jim Hutton, WFRCs first geographer, to run 

CRRL’s GIS/Geospatial Section full-time.

In 2000, Alec Maule began his research to determine how natural physiological processes 

interact with climate driven changes in the aquatic environment to affect the survival of 

individuals and thus, populations. In 2002, Maule began his classic work on the physiological 

effects of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) on Arctic char (Salvelinus alpinus) with Norway’s 

Kårvik Research Station and support from the National Science Foundation. Arctic char in high 

northern latitudes migrate to the ocean in the spring to feed and grow. This results in 

accumulation of PCBs in their visceral fat. During the winter, the char reside in freshwater lakes 

where they do not feed, but mobilize lipids from adipose tissue for energy. This process results in 

the distribution of toxic PCBs to the brain, spleen, and heart that decrease the overall 

physiological health of these populations. 

In 2003, as the Western Fisheries Research Center neared its seventh decade, Director 

Frank Shipley transferred to the USGS Western Regional Office as Deputy Regional Biologist 

overseeing all six western regional science centers. During Shipley’s 8 years as Director, the 

WFRC produced more than 600 peer-reviewed scientific publications together with hundreds 

more contract research reports, many of which formed the basis for administrative action by 

natural resource managers. The unprecedented growth in contract work related to the ESA listing 

of several Columbia River salmon runs and the increasing demands for biological research on 

other riverine species such as white sturgeon and Pacific lampreys had resulted in a total WFRC

staff numbering nearly 200 employees, including students and contractors. 

Overall, the Shipley years at WFRC were marked by high productivity and spirited 

cooperation between the Center, the fisheries research community worldwide, academia, the 

aquaculture industry, and state governmental agencies with similar legislative responsibilities. 
30

Chapter 6

2003 – 2010: The WFRC Today

In 2003, Lyman K. Thorsteinson, who had been Deputy 

Center Director since 2001, was selected as Frank Shipley’s 

replacement. Thorsteinson had recently published his epic 

reference texts Fishes of Alaska51 and The Rockfishes of the 

Northeast Pacific,

52 and had recently served a term as Acting 

Center Director of the USGS Great Lakes Fishery Science 

Center. In 2004, Thorsteinson selected W. David Woodson, 

then a staff biologist at the Western Regional Office, as his 

Deputy Director. Woodson would go on to play a key role in 

helping to establish research priorities, and in managing, 

planning, and evaluating all phases of the Center’s activities. 

Thorsteinson and Woodson’s first act was to update and 

implement a new strategic 5-year Strategic Plan53 for the 

Center that placed high value on USGS integrated science, on 

inter-Center research collaborations in the Western United 

States, and on upgrading laboratory facilities to meet the

changing science missions of the WFRC. A team approach 

was used for strategic planning to identify and describe 

the science needs and relevance to managers across the 

Western United States. Thorsteinson’s strategic 5-year

plan was a positive step forward in making the WFRC 

and its field stations into a more cohesive working 

organization. 

Thorsteinson also involved the Center in USGS 

integrated science planning for the restoration of 

ecological processes in the nearshore waters of Puget 

Sound. Such processes have become an ongoing focus in

WFRC’s pioneering research on restoration of the Elwha 

River (dam removal), and in Skagit and Liberty bays 

(wetlands and coastal restoration; effects of urbanization). 

 

51 Mecklenburg, C.W., Mecklenburg, T.A., and Thorsteinson, L.K., 2002, Fishes of Alaska: American Fisheries 

Society, Bethesda, Maryland, 1037 p.

52 Love, M.S., Yoklavich, M., and Thorsteinson, L., 2002, The rockfishes of the northeast Pacific: Berkeley, 

University of California Press, 404 p.

53 Thorsteinson, L., 2005, Strategic Plan Western Fisheries Research Center: U.S. Geological Survey, accessed 

November 29, 2012, at http:/wfrc.usgs.gov/about/centerstratplan100705.pdf. 

Lyman K. Thorsteinson, Center 

Director. Photograph ca. 2003.

WFRC Deputy Director W. David 

Woodson (right) with Secretary of the 

Interior Kempthorne, ca. 2007.
31

Elsewhere, the WFRC took a leadership role in developing next generation tools for 

instream flows and for ecosystem and water-resource management analysis in the West. One 

example is a joint venture with the USGS National Biological Information Infrastructure 

program (NBII) to conduct an estuarine GAP analysis for Puget Sound. 

This also was a time of great transition for USGS Research Centers because of the 

creation and implementation of common business practices, computer-based project management 

tools, and fundamental science practices such as peer and policy reviews. Working together, 

Thorsteinson and Woodson gradually created opportunities for joint planning of research 

projects for constituents, and introduced a strategic planning system and project review planning 

and budgeting system, that relied on interactive participation and involvement of the WFRC staff 

for the development of the objectives, plans, and budgets for each project. 

Seattle Laboratory

During the Thorsteinson years, the WFRC Fish Health 

Research Section increased their efforts toward evaluating the 

effects of diseases as ecosystem process. Study areas included 

both freshwater and marine wild fish populations in Alaska, the 

Great Lakes, Chesapeake Bay watershed, the Mississippi River, 

and throughout the American West. Specific geographic hotspots 

included the Yukon River and Prince William Sound, Alaska,

Great Lakes, Columbia River and Klamath Falls, Washington and 

Oregon. Much of their research was and is performed in WFRC's 

aquatic biosafety level 3 laboratory (BSL-3), under the 

management of Eveline J. Emmenegger. The WFRC BSL-3 is 

one of a few such facilities in the United States built for the 

testing of fish pathogens and invasive species that pose a high risk 

to the environment. 

Gael Kurath and 

collaborators continued their focus 

on the regional and global phylogenies of the IHNV and DNA 

vaccines for fish. Highlights include developing genetic typing 

methods for IHN field isolates, large-scale phylogenetic studies 

that revealed the major North American IHN subgroups of IHN, 

IHNV, and VHSV, and the online databases Molecular 

Epidemiology of Aquatic Pathogens-IHNV (MEAP-IHNV), and 

AquaPathogen X, a template database for tracking field isolates 

of aquatic pathogens. The MEAP-IHNV database54 is based on 

isolates collected throughout western North America from 1996 

to the present (2012) and includes some virus isolates from 

Eastern Russia. The database generates tables and maps to assist 

fish-culture facility managers, fish health professionals, and 

academic researchers in developing and testing hypothesis about 

how IHNV moves across landscapes and changes over time. 

 

54 The IHNV database is available online at http://gis.nacse.org/ihnv or from the WFRC website 

http://wfrc.usgs.gov/. 

Fish Geneticist John D. Hansen, 

ca. 2004.

Microbiologist Eveline 

Emmenegger, ca. 2010.
32

John D. Hansen was hired in 2004 to expand and 

strengthen WFRC’s research effort to define the basic 

mechanisms of the piscine immune system and the 

application of this knowledge to the control of infectious fish 

diseases. A particular research emphasis was to determine the 

effects of multiple environmental stress factors on the health 

and physiological condition of aquatic organisms. Functional 

genomic approaches with leading immunologists and 

virologists were pursued. To strengthen this work, 

microbiologist Maureen Purcell was hired in 2005 to further 

characterize the innate resistance of rainbow trout to the IHN 

virus and other bacterial and parasite pathogens. Together 

with the comparative immunology and genetics of disease 

resistance, research also is focused on important finfish 

pathogens such as bacterial kidney disease, IHN, VHSV, 

Ichthyophonus hoferi and Nucleospora salmonis. A zebra fish colony has been established at the 

Seattle Laboratory to facilitate investigations of the genetic basis of disease.

Elwha River Restoration Project 

In 2004, Jeff Duda began research and 

monitoring of the short- and the long-term effects 

of removing the Elwha and Glines Canyon Dams 

that have blocked salmon and sediment passage 

on the Elwha River, Washington, for almost 100 

years. Following dam removal in 2012, salmon 

will be able to spawn in pristine river habitats of 

the Olympic National Park, and sediment will 

once again flow down the river and enrich the 

eroding shoreline. 

In the initial stages, WFRC primarily was 

concerned with documenting baseline levels of 

vitally important components of the river and 

nearshore ecosystems that are expected to change 

once salmon return to their ancestral breeding 

grounds. The dynamics of recolonization are 

complex and few predictions about the status of the fish community 5, 10, and 50 years post-dam 

removal currently exist. Duda worked collaboratively with partners (NPS, NOAA, USFWS, and 

the Elwha Klallam Tribe) to conduct one of the largest whole river surveys ever done in a 

wilderness river. The goal of this undertaking was to describe the distribution and abundance 

patterns of adult fish in the main stem and major side channels of the river. Steve Rubin joined in 

the extensive fieldwork on the Elwha River to enumerate rainbow and bull trout populations 

within index reaches that will be sampled into the future. The riverscape changes due to 

recolonization of anadromous salmonids are being surveyed following dam removal. Duda55 also 

developed baseline data about patterns of macroinvertebrate and periphyton communities above, 

between, and below the dams, and collected samples of bugs, algae, and fish to analyze for the 

 

55 Duda received the Department of the Interior Superior Service Award in 2011 for this project.

WFRC Project Leader Jeff Duda holding an adult 

Chinook salmon captured in the Elwha River 

weir, ca. 2010. Photograph taken by John 

McMillan, NOAA.

Microbiologist Maureen Purcell, ca. 

2010.
33

stable isotope levels of carbon and nitrogen used to 

determine the relative contribution of salmon 

carcass energy to the aquatic ecosystem. The story 

of the Elwha River dam removals will be told for 

generations to come as an example of a dramatic 

step taken to restore salmon, a cultural and sociopolitical icon of the Pacific Northwest.

In 2005, noted WFRC ecologist John 

Emlen retired and was replaced by Reg 

Reisenbichler56 as Chief of the Fish Ecology 

Section. Work began on a new USGS initiative, 

the multidisciplinary Coastal Habitats in Puget 

Sound (CHIPS) project, with a goal of gathering scientists from water, biology, and geology 

disciplines to work on estuarine food webs. An Elwha River project was funded to study the 

coastal nearshore marine ecosystem, the estuary, and the lower Elwha River prior to dam 

removal. Led by Jeff Duda, WFRC scientists Kim Larsen, Steve Rubin, and Nancy Elder worked 

with CHIPS funding to study the marine benthic invertebrate, algae, kelp, and fish communities. 

Sampling was based on habitat maps produced from sonar and video surveys by the USGS 

Coastal and Marine Geology program. Additional work was done to describe the ecological 

conditions of the Elwha River estuary, with a focus on juvenile salmon use, growth, and diet, 

coupled with hydrological and geological data sets collected by other USGS science centers. In 

2010, the CHIPS project was recognized with a "Science Success Story" award “For advancing 

the goals of the USGS Science Strategy by tackling complex ecological issues and finding 

solutions to environmental problems.” 

Invasive Species

As aquatic invasive species began receiving more attention as a 

special threat to the habitat of native animals and the ecosystems upon 

which they depend, the potential for species introductions from marine 

ballast water transport and discharge by the commercial shipping 

industry in Puget Sound emerged as a critical issue. The development 

and testing of ballast water treatment technologies begun by Paul 

Hershberger and his collaborators during Director Frank Shipley’s era 

had evolved into a unique research, development, and testing facility at 

WFRC’s Marrowstone Marine Field Station. Accordingly, in 2006, 

Center Director Thorsteinson created an independent Invasive Species 

Research Section and hired Scott S. Smith as Section Chief. Smith, 

formerly State Coordinator for Aquatic Invasive Species with the 

Washington Department of Fisheries, had been working with WFRC’s 

Russell Rodriquez and Paul Hershberger (MMFS) for several years to develop DNA-based 

diagnostic tools to detect the presence of non-indigenous species in complex samples of soils, 

plants, and wood. Later in 2006, Deborah A. Reusser, at the Hatfield Marine Science Center 

(HMSC) in Newport, Oregon, was hired as a research geographer to begin developing database 

templates for the collection of invasive species information for Pacific Rim countries, regional 

benthic indicator development, modeling global distributions and range shifts of aquatic invasive 

species in a changing climate, and to conduct risk assessments for non-indigenous species. 

 

56 Retired, 2008.

Lower Elwha Dam, ca. 2010.

Invasive Species Section 

Chief Scott S. Smith, ca. 

2006.
34

In 2009, WFRC received a special Congressional appropriation for aquatic invasive 

species planning and risk assessment work in the Columbia River Basin. As of this writing 

(2012) WFRC has expanded its involvement in the problems caused by invasive marine and 

other aquatic species introduced into northwest coastal waters via discharges of ballast water 

from ships. Cooperators on this project are from many agencies including the University of 

Washington, the Ecosystems Projects Northeast-Midwest Institute, Purdue University, 

Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the University of California-Davis. The 

emphasis is on prevention research, to determine the technologies and methods best suited to 

address ballast water issues in the Pacific Northwest including Puget Sound, other coastal 

habitats, and the lower Columbia River. Invasive species such as zebra mussels in the Columbia 

and lower Colorado Rivers are of great management concern. The work by Eviline Emmenegger 

on the introduction of spring viremia of carp into North America and the viral hemorrhagic 

septicemia virus into the Great Lakes has added a unique dimension to the Center’s invasive 

species research effort.

In 2010, WFRC created the Newport Duty Station at the HMSC. Led by Deborah 

Reusser, a staff of three has intensified the research and the development of models used to 

estimate effects of climate change on the distribution and abundance of native and non-native 

estuarine species at spatial and temporal scales. 

Marrowstone Marine Field Station

After several decades of the MMFS serving primarily as a 

service laboratory for visiting researchers, in 2003 a commitment was 

made by WFRC Center Director Lyman Thorsteinson and Fish 

Health Section Chief Jim Winton to develop an independent research 

program at the MMFS. Paul K. Hershberger was subsequently hired 

to carry out this mission and bring a vision of disease ecology to the 

facility. Hershberger immediately began developing an internal 

research program to improve the current understanding of disease 

processes that operate in populations of wild marine fishes. The 

program uses techniques from science disciplines such as 

epidemiology, disease ecology, virology, parasitology, bacteriology, 

immunology, and molecular biology to address applied disease issues 

in fisheries ecology affecting fisheries management.

During the initial years of Hershberger's leadership at 

Marrowstone, coastal investigations in Puget Sound began receiving special attention. In 2004, 

Jacob Gregg was hired to establish rearing methods for specific pathogen free (SPF) Pacific 

herring. At this writing, Gregg and Hershberger maintain five age classes of SPF Pacific herring 

and colonies of SPF rockfishes and ling cod at the facility, the only colonies of SPF and 

immunologically naïve marine fish known to exist. Development of these colonies for use as 

experimental animals resulted in immediate advancements in the field of disease ecology. As a 

result, active disease ecology projects at the Marrowstone Marine Field Station began to extend 

throughout Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska. One important new project was 

the evaluation of the pathological effects of Ichthyophonus on the survival and reproductive 

success of Yukon River Chinook salmon by WFRC’s Jim Winton and collaborators George 

Sanders, Paul Hershberger, Jacob Gregg, and the University of Washington’s Richard Kocan. 

Researchers worldwide have visited the station each year to use the SPF fish colonies for their 

research projects. 

MMFS Chief Paul 

Hershberger, ca. 2007
35

Research at the MMFS by Hershberger, longtime associate Nancy Elder, and cooperators 

currently emphasizes marine ecosystem health, ballast water treatment technologies, and the 

ecology of invasive species. As of this writing (2012), the research staff at Marrowstone has 

grown to include 10 scientists, students, and post-doctoral associates. 

Reno Field Station

At this writing (2012), Gary Scoppettone, longtime associate Peter Rissler, and the Reno 

Field Station (RFS), Nevada, research team remain the preeminent USGS biologists determining 

the effects of water allocation, habitat modification, and non-indigenous fish introductions on 

threatened/endangered native fish populations of the Great Basin and Mojave deserts. Their 

efforts over the last 30 years have provided a critical link between research and on-the-ground 

management actions. Their work with the FWS to recover the endangered Moapa dace (Moapa 

coriacea), and with the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe to recover the endangered cui-ui (Chasmistes 

cujus) are only two examples of their long history of success. Scoppettone and his research team

have played a leadership role on numerous endangered species recovery teams and facilitated the 

cooperation of private and public partners. By conservative estimate, the RFS has been 

instrumental in hiring, training, and mentoring dozens of research and agency biologists, many of 

whom are now running their own conservation programs throughout the United States. In 2008, 

RFS Chief Gary Scoppettone was one of only 18 biologists in the United States recognized with 

the Endangered Species Recovery Champion Award from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Columbia River Research Laboratory

In 2003, CRRL Director Jim Seelye retired and was 

succeeded by James H. Peterson. Peterson served as Director 

until his premature death in 2007 at the age of 53. Alec Maule 

and then Dennis Rondorf stepped into the void as acting 

Directors until a permanent replacement for Peterson could be 

found. Since 2008, the CRRL has been under the leadership of 

Stephen M. Waste. With years of practical experience in the 

commercial fishing industry, a doctoral dissertation on the role 

of science in natural resource decision making, and additional 

years of administrative experience at the Bonneville Power 

Administration and the Northwest Power and Conservation 

Council, Waste has proved a valuable addition to the WFRC 

Research Management Team.

Under the leadership of Waste, his predecessors, and 

lead scientists such as Noah Adams, John Beeman, Patrick 

Connolly, Theresa Liedke, Alec Maule, Matt Mesa, Michael 

Parsley, Russell Perry, and Dennis Rondorf, the CRRL has become WFRC’s largest field station. 

Contract research is conducted for, and in collaboration with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 

Bonneville Power Administration, Bureau of Reclamation, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 

Public Utility Districts, Tribes, and several state agencies. As of this writing (2012), CRRL work 

includes fish biology, large river ecology, environmental physiology, fish behavior, invasive 

species, and mathematical modeling research projects throughout the Columbia River basin in 

five Western United States. Research Geographer James Hatten provides GIS predictive 

modeling and remote sensing capability. The CRRL also has become a national leader in the 

research, development, and use of biotelemetry and hydroacoustics such as Doppler water 

Stephen M. Waste, CRRL Director, 

ca. 2010.
36

velocity profiling technologies. With a year-round staff of about 70 biologists and administrative 

support personnel with another 70 staff members hired during the field season, the CRRL is one 

of the largest employers in Skamania County, Washington, and one of the largest USGS research 

units in the Western United States. 

Klamath Falls Field Station

Under the leadership of its first Director, Rip Shively, the Klamath Falls Field Station 

(KFFS) became part of an interdisciplinary USGS 

effort to develop new tools that could be used to 

address science and management needs related to 

water allocations in the Klamath River Basin. Upon 

Shively's departure in 2008, Scott VanderKooi was 

appointed Chief Biologist. VanderKooi continued 

the development of this and other collaborative 

approaches among hydrologists, geomorphologists, 

limnologists, and fisheries biologists. In 2011, 

VanderKooi, the last of the founding members of 

the KFFS, took a position with the USGS Southwest 

Biological Science Center and was succeeded by 

Eric Janney, the present Chief Biologist. Currently 

(2012), the KFFS staff consists of 14 biologists and 

support personnel who are providing needed new insights into lake ecosystem dynamics in the 

Upper Klamath Basin. Their research findings have long been considered authoritative by land 

use managers and water users in this area and will be crucial to future USGS watershed research 

and modeling in the basin. Under Janney’s leadership, and that of KFFS biologists such as Greta 

Blackwood, Summer Burdick, Dave Hewitt, and Barbara Martin, the KFFS is well poised to 

respond to new opportunities associated with the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement such as 

the prospective removal of four dams on the Klamath River. 

Conclusion

At the close 2010, the WFRC ended its first 75 years of existence with a heritage of 

accomplishment and dedication that sets a very high standard for future generations to follow. 

The Center originated with the consulting hatchery disease service pioneered by Frederic F. Fish 

in 1935 as part of the Grand Coulee Fish Maintenance Project (GCFMP), the first federal 

hatchery program designed to compensate for hydroelectric development in the Columbia River 

Basin. In 1938, the Mitchell Act was passed followed by a succession of other conservation 

legislation that tasked Fish and his successors with providing a constant supply of new and 

improved technical information in response to the continuing natural resource challenges of the 

DOI and the Nation—challenges that each year grew ever more complex. The WFRC of today 

evolved over time to meet these challenges and at this writing (2012) employs a staff of nearly 

200 biologists and support personnel with unique capabilities in fish health and disease, genetics 

and molecular biology, biotelemetry, invasive species, bioenergetics, population dynamics, fish 

physiology, immunology, biogeography, ecosystem informatics, fish ecology, and the population 

analysis of threatened and endangered species. 

By the end of its first 75 years, Center scientists had communicated their actionable 

research findings to natural resource managers, academia, and the fishery research community 

worldwide through the publication of more than 2,000 peer-reviewed technical papers, chapters 

Eric Janney, Chief, Klamath Falls Field Station 

with assistant fishery biologist Chris, ca. 2009.
37

in books, and textbooks that have become standard reference works. Person-to-person contact, 

workshops, college teaching, professional society work, and presentations at scientific meetings 

were a high-priority as well. In recent years, research findings have been increasingly 

communicated through web-based delivery systems that support visualization technology and 

GIS products that deliver scientific information over multiple spatial scales and enable the 

synthesis of scientific information by the public as well as by resource managers. More 

information about the diverse fisheries research projects WFRC scientists are conducting is 

available on the WFRC website: http://wfrc.usgs.gov. 

Over the next 75 years, with the health of Earth's aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems 

increasingly threatened by stressors such as accelerating climate change, population growth, and 

intensive water and energy development, the need for the work of the WFRC can only increase. 

Although the Center likely will be a very different place at the end of its next 75 years, its 

evolution will be firmly rooted in the story of the research and of the people that has been related 

here. The 75-year heritage of their dedication and accomplishments provides a firm foundation 

on which to build our future. 

Epilogue

In October of 2011, Center Director Thorsteinson accepted a new position in the USGS 

with the Office of the Regional Executive—Alaska Area and moved on to new responsibilities. 

When Thorsteinson came to the WFRC, the Center was doing excellent research. When he left, 

the research program had been improved over even that level with a staff numbering 153 

permanent FTEs and an annual budget of $16.2 million including appropriated funds, grants, and 

contracts. Thorsteinson’s team building approach to strategic planning significantly increased the 

sense of community between the Seattle headquarters and its widely distributed field stations. 

The new people hired during his era considerably enhanced the depth of the Center’s research 

programs. Nearly 600 peer-reviewed scientific papers were 

published under Thorsteinson’s leadership.

The current (2012) Center Director, Dr. Jill B. Rolland, 

assumed her duties in October 2012. In 2002, Rolland completed 

her doctoral research at the WFRC on a new virus disease of 

salmonids and subsequently became head of the Aquaculture, 

Swine, Equine, and Poultry Health Programs of the U.S. 

Department of Agriculture. It has been 35 years (Tom Parisot, 

1974–77) since the WFRC has had a Director who is a fish 

health specialist. Rolland brings a long absent perspective in 

fisheries research back to the position of Center Director and is 

the first female Director in WFRC history. Rolland’s vision is of 

a forward agenda, but she intends that her leadership will build 

on the high standard of excellence that connects WFRC’s past to 

the present day, and the present day to the work yet to be done. 

Dr. Jill Rolland, WFRC Director 

2012 ―.
38

Acknowledgments

Writing this history of the biological research of the Western Fisheries Research Center 

would not have been possible without the help of a number of emeritus scientists and colleagues 

who have recounted and documented events that occurred at the Center during the early years. 

Among these, Donald F. Amend, Douglas P. Anderson, Carl Burger, Dennis Crouch, Stan Smith, 

Wm. T. Yasutake, Christine Moffit. Former Center Directors Thomas J. Parisot and Lyman 

Thorsteinson were particularly helpful. 

I am especially grateful for the assistance of the families of the late Frederic F. Fish and 

Robert R. Rucker for sharing personal records and recollections of WFRC’s founder and his 

chief assistant. 
39

Appendix 1

Center Research Managers and 

Administrative Support Staff

Table 1. WFRC Directors through the years.

Director Term

Frederic F. Fish57 1934–1950

Robert R. Rucker58 1950–1973

Gary A. Wedemeyer, Acting 1973–1974

Thomas Parisot 1974–1977

Gary A. Wedemeyer, Acting 1977–1978

Alfred C. Fox59 1978–1994

Al Marmelstein, Acting 1994

Gary A. Wedemeyer, Temp. Promotion 1994–1995

Frank Shipley 1995–2003

Lyman Thorsteinson 2003–2011

Jill B. Rolland 2012–

Table 2. WFRC administrative support staff, Seattle Laboratory.

Administrative Officers Facilities Managers Computer Specialists

Margaret "Peggy" Dixon, 1979–1994 Richard A. Rosser 1980–1994 Gregg Konkel, 1984–1992

Elizabeth Turpin, Acting 1994–1995 Ronald L. Wilson, 1994–1998 Jeff Baker, 1994–1996 

Cyndee Matus, 1995–1997 Lynn Hinton, 1998 Cyril Ward, 1997

Joyce Jones, 1997–2003 Kyle Sato 1998– Carl Griffis, 1997–1999

Debra Becker, Acting, 2003 Robin Salling 1999–

Dirk Van Dyk, Acting, 2003 Mary Dunning 2006–

Elizabeth A. Turpin, 2003–2008

Bonnie Dotson, Acting, 2009–2010

Elizabeth Turpin, 2010–

 

57 Deceased, 1978.

58 Deceased, 1998.

59 Deceased, 2011.
40

WFRC administrative staff, ca. 2008. Back Row: Rod Polintan (CRRL), Jennifer McLean (CRRL), Bonnie 

Dotson (Seattle), Robin Salling (Seattle), Cheryll Trammel (CRRL), Henry Higgins (CRRL), Mary Dunning 

(Seattle), Michele Beeman (CRRL), Barry Egenes (Seattle). Middle: Cindy Hansen (KFFS), Rosalyn Lehner 

(Seattle), Judy Maule (CRRL), Barbara Gee (CRRL), Loretta Slusher (Seattle). Front: Elizabeth Gordon 

(CRRL), Lynne Casal (CRRL), Elizabeth Turpin (Seattle), Linda Hazen (CRRL). Not pictured: Mimi 

Kouretchian and Gael Sauer (Seattle).
41

Table 3. Columbia River Research Laboratory 

Directors.

Director Term

William R. Nelson60 1978–1994

James H. Petersen, Acting 1994–1995

James G. Seelye61 1995–2003

James H Petersen, Acting 2003

Mark K. Sogge, Acting 2003

James H. Petersen62 2003–2007

Dennis W. Rondorf, Acting 2007

Alec G. Maule, Acting 2007–2008

Stephen P. Waste 2008–

Table 4. Columbia River Research Laboratory

Administrative Section Leaders.

Administrative leader Term

Daphne Erickson Faler 1983–1986

Sue Neece 1987–1991

Michele Beeman 1991–2009

Elizabeth Gordon 2009–2010

Elizabeth Gordon/Michele Beeman63 2010–

Table 5. WFRC names through the years. 

Center or laboratory name Years

Hatchery Consulting Disease Service, Fisheries Biological Laboratory Seattle64 1935–1945

Pacific Coast Fish Cultural Investigations, Fisheries Biological Laboratory 1945–1950

Western Fish Disease Laboratory 1950–1974

National Fisheries Research Center 1974–1993

Northwest Biological Science Center 1993–1997

Western Fisheries Research Center 1997–present

Table 6. WFRC organizational components (as of 2010). 

Headquarters and Seattle Laboratory, Seattle, Washington

Columbia River Research Laboratory, Cook, Washington

Dixon Duty Station, Dixon, California

Klamath Falls Field Station, Klamath Falls, Oregon

Marrowstone Marine Field Station, Nordland, Washington

Newport Duty Station, Newport, Oregon

Reno Field Station, Reno, Nevada 

 

60 Retired, 1994, deceased 2011.

61 Retired, 2003

62 Deceased, 2007.

63 Shared duties until 2012 when Michele Beeman retired.

64 Now the Northwest Fisheries Science Center, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
42

Appendix 2

The NBS Era — A Biological Survey for the Nation65

The original idea for a National Biological Survey 

(NBS) dates back to 1896 when Congress established the 

Division of Biological Survey within the U.S. Department of 

Agriculture (USDA) to map the geographic distribution of 

plants and animals in the United States. In 1935, the Division of 

Biological Survey became the Bureau of Biological Survey and 

the legendary naturalist J. “Ding” Darling was appointed Chief 

Biologist. In 1940, the Roosevelt administration merged the 

USDA Biological Survey with the Bureau of Fisheries in the 

Department of the Interior (DOI) to form the U.S. Fish and 

Wildlife Service.

By 1977, the merits of reestablishing a National Biological Survey were being discussed 

anew among conservation agencies and scientific societies. In 1982, The Association of 

Systematics Collections (ASC) endorsed the concept with the publication Foundations for a 

National Biological Survey. Meetings were held with federal agency representatives and 

members of Congress between 1986 and 1992 and legislation to establish a National Biological 

Survey was drafted, but never went forward. However, with the election of President Clinton and 

the appointment of Bruce Babbitt as Secretary of the Interior, the idea rapidly gained momentum. 

Secretary Babbit reasoned that if incipient threatened and endangered species could be 

identified and their habitats improved or saved, many legal disputes could be avoided. However, 

such an effort would require both a concerted survey of biota in the United States to identify 

such species and an independent agency within the DOI to conduct the survey. Secretary Babbitt 

asked the National Research Council (NRC) to consider the organization and direction that a 

national biological survey should take and in October 1993, the NRC issued its report, A 

Biological Survey for the Nation. Secretary Babbitt immediately issued a secretarial order 

creating the National Biological Survey (NBS) as a new research agency within the DOI.

The NBS was staffed by transferring 1,200 scientists and 600 support personnel from the 

7 existing DOI agencies—most of them coming from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and 

National Park Service. Ronald Pulliam, director of the University of Georgia Institute of 

Ecology, was appointed Director of NBS. F. Eugene Hester, a career DOI employee, then 

assistant director for science in the National Park Service (NPS), was appointed deputy director. 

James Reichman, an ecologist with prior faculty appointments at Northern Arizona University 

and Kansas State University, and a stint as program director with the National Science 

Foundation was appointed assistant director. Pulliam and Reichman were selected for their 

academic experience; Gene Hester provided agency administrative expertise.

The NBS was controversial by the time it had been in existence for less than 1 year and 

was at risk for elimination. In response, Secretary Babbitt issued Secretarial Order 3185 in 1995, 

 

65After, Wagner, F.H., 1999, Whatever happened to the National Biological Survey?: BioScience, v. 49, p. 219–222.
43

which changed the agency's name to the National Biological Service, based on the reasoning that 

the title “Survey” unnecessarily conjured up an image of biologists searching for threatened and 

endangered species. Order 3185 also instructed NBS employees not to work on private land 

unless the owner or lessee gave permission. However, the turmoil continued. 

In 1996, 3 years after it was established, Congress abolished the NBS, and transferred its 

employees into DOI's U.S. Geological Survey, as the Biological Resources Division (BRD). 

Director Pulliam returned to his former position at the Institute of Ecology. Assistant Director 

Reichman had already resigned to become the director of the new National Center for Ecological 

Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, California. Deputy Director Gene Hester retired.

The first BRD Director, Dennis Fenn, was installed in October 1996. Fenn was a veteran 

employee of NPS, and had held several administrative posts. After 3 years of continuous 

administrative turmoil, Fenn’s experience and sensitivity to agency cultures and procedures, 

together with a secure home in a veteran DOI agency enabled BRD biologists to regain their 

previous levels of morale and productivity. 
44

This page left intentionally blank 
Publishing support provided by the U.S. Geological Survey

Publishing Network, Tacoma Publishing Service Center

For more information concerning the research in this report, contact the 

Director, Western Fisheries Research Center

U.S. Geological Survey

6505 NE 65th Street

Seattle, WA 98115

http://wfrc.usgs.gov/
Wedemeyer— The Story of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Western Fisheries Research Center, 1935–2010—General Information Product 149