TY - JOUR
AU - Varanasi, Usha
AB - Abstract I describe lessons learned and the people and principles that influenced six decades of professional endeavours from graduate schools to ascending, often unexpectedly, the science and management ladder in National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) fisheries, which manages US living marine resources. For this woman chemist from India, the twists of fate and love of adventure presented amazing opportunities as well as challenges. My research on cetacean biosonar as well as on the impact of fossil fuel pollution on seafood safety and the health of marine organisms taught me the value of multidisciplinary approaches and unusual alliances. Transitioning into management, and eventually as the director of Northwest Fisheries Science Center, I learned the value of transparency and empathy while communicating our results to impacted communities, and the resolve to support the science regardless of the consequences. My advice to young professionals is that the journey should be as fulfilling as reaching the goalpost. At the twilight of my own journey, I networked with NOAA Fisheries and India’s marine science community to encourage scientist exchanges and training. My participation in University of Washington’s nature and human health programme confirms my conviction that conserving healthy ecosystems is a powerful and practical approach for people and our planet. Introduction People often ask me how a woman from India with a chemistry degree, became the first female science director of a traditionally white, male-dominated US federal agency dealing with complex fisheries and oceanic issues. I also field questions from students and young professionals on how they should plan their studies and careers to secure a cool career like the one I had in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (Supplementary materials for a glossary of acronyms). It is perhaps surprising to them that my career and entire life story are filled with a series of unplanned adventures, with many challenges and opportunities, as if I were casting a wide net in the sea of life and making the most of the catch. I believe that my openness to the unknown, and my unwavering faith in American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson’s words—“nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm”—have propelled me to uncharted paths, resulting in unusual alliances and a successful and fulfilling career. My 50-plus-year professional career has been rich in varied experiences, but I focus this paper on lessons learned rather than detailing the science I conducted or the scientists with whom I interacted, except as needed for my storytelling. I also give examples of my involvement in fisheries management in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) at the helm of NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center (NWFSC). Regrettably, this format does not allow me to mention and thank countless colleagues, mentors, students, and allies who have helped me, except for those who were part of the events that have greatly influenced the trajectory of my journey. These people fall into three main categories: mentors, sceptics, and allies. Mentors guided me, and their values—which resonated with mine—are my lifelong beacons. Sceptics kept me on my toes, and I often learned from them what not to do. Allies and well-wishers helped me achieve specific projects and goals. Early education and travels (Burma and India to United States in 1961) Before I describe my circuitous route to the fisheries profession, let me offer a glimpse into my early years, which were quite unpredictable. In 1901, my paternal grandfather voyaged as a stowaway on a ship to Burma (now known as Myanmar). He was 15 years old. He became a successful businessman but died at age 45, leaving his widow to take care of his business enterprise and the family. My amazing grandmother, Navalkuver Talackchand Shah, rose to the occasion and managed both the business and personal sides of her life in Burma and India. I was born in Burma during World War II and had to be evacuated to India when I was only a few months old. Thus, my first overseas journey was on a ship with frequent blackouts to hide from enemy planes. While growing up I loved reading American and British mystery stories. So, my parents thought I would earn a degree in literature, a suitable subject for a girl of that generation from a business-oriented family in India. But Nalini Kanuga, the indomitable principal of my girls-only school, S.D.D.R. Shala in Bombay (now renamed Mumbai), encouraged me to pursue an education in the sciences, which she believed would make me financially independent. It was a novel concept for Indian girls in those days to think about financial independence. To the bewilderment of my family, I enjoyed science. To me, science was like a detective story pieced together with evidence and experiments to test hypotheses. I liked organic chemistry, partly because of wonderful teachers who showed me the magic of its logical chemical structures and reactions. As the first girl born after four generations of boys in the Shah family, I was allowed a degree of latitude not customarily afforded to girls. When I received admission to a prestigious college in Bombay University to seek a bachelor’s degree with a chemistry major and a minor in physics and math, my father and his business partner started to imagine that I might help them and my future husband, start a pharmaceutical company. But I paid no heed to their plans. And my two female mentors—my paternal grandmother and my high school principal—made it easier for me to pursue my interests. When I was a junior, two of my male classmates applied to US universities for their postgraduate studies. I thought going abroad for higher education could be a great adventure and proposed the idea to my father, remembering what my school principal had inculcated in our young brains: “Girls can do everything boys can, and do it better!” My grandmother persuaded my father to let me study abroad if I got admission and a scholarship from a good university. And I succeeded, despite the challenges of applying for admission in a country that I was only vaguely familiar with. So, on a sultry August day in 1961, I found myself on a plane—my first flight ever—to Pasadena, California, to attend the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) as a graduate student in chemistry. A sense of adventure, optimism, and perseverance—backed by strong mentors—sent this young Indian woman on an unexpected path. Those characteristics have helped me succeed against many odds in life. Higher education in the United States (1961–1967) My time at Caltech as one of only seven female students and the first Indian woman proved challenging, especially without the comfort and ease of telecommunication channels that students now enjoy with their families. I often thought of running back to my parents but gritted my teeth and persevered. There were so many difficult transitions and complications—cultural, educational, climate, food—while learning to communicate in American English. The hardest challenge at Caltech was simply “staying afloat” at one of the toughest educational institutions in the world. But I discovered a hidden ability to learn “on the job”. I asked people around me to correct my english, and to feel free to advise me about american customs. As I look back, I marvel at the opportunities and kindness I received—which I took for granted then. I shared an apartment with two physics students who helped me celebrate my 21st birthday and taught me American-style housekeeping. I occasionally got to share meals at the Caltech cafeteria with Nobel laureate faculty and their students. They were kind enough to tell me which items were vegetarian and included me in their scintillating conversations. I did not realize then my unique fortune at communing with them and unconsciously absorbing their knowledge and wisdom. In one of the life-changing moments, on my first day on the campus, I met a brilliant engineering student—my future husband—who was from a different region and linguistic community in India. Suryanarayana Rao Varanasi, my senior by 2 years, is one of the kindest and most emancipated men I have ever met. He took me under his wing, which made my life more bearable. However, in the fall of 1962, he decided to move to Seattle, Washington, to pursue a doctorate degree in aeronautical engineering at the University of Washington (UW). So, again, my life took an unexpected and exciting turn because I had found a lifelong friend and a partner who even after 55 years continues to inspire me and keeps me grounded. Instead of my original plan of returning to India after finishing MS degree in organic chemistry from Caltech, I enrolled in a PhD programme at UW’s Department of Chemistry. It was tough shifting from a small private institution to very large state university. But I was lucky to receive research and teaching assistantships and to have Professor Wolfgang Manfred “Fred” Schubert as my thesis advisor. Fred was a brilliant researcher in physical organic chemistry who demanded and extracted the best performance from his students. Over the years, Fred became a dear family friend until his death in 2017 at age 97. He helped me find my first research position in a fisheries lab, where I worked for the next four decades. Unemployment and a love for horticulture (1968) When I graduated with a PhD, most of my classmates and I could not find a professional chemist’s job anywhere in Seattle. A major employer, Boeing Company, significantly reduced its payroll at the time, causing an economic downturn in the region. Many of my classmates left Seattle, but I could not. By then I was married to Rao, who was employed as an engineer at Boeing. Being a non-white, immigrant woman, my chances of finding a professional position were slimmer than for my white male counterparts. I could not even get past the receptionist at most chemical companies to obtain an interview for an occasional job announcement that was posted in the newspapers. The secretaries on the phone told me that the job was not suitable for a “girl”. After a few months, I decided to take a break from futile job searches as my husband and I were planning an extended trip to India in winter 1968 to meet each other’s families for the first time. I decided to spend my free time learning something new by visiting the nearby public library and reading voraciously. I became fascinated with horticulture and taught myself how to grow and propagate flowering plants from cuttings in my miniscule patio garden. This early exposure to, and love of, gardening germinated in full force later in life when my professional interest turned to the emerging field of interconnectedness between nature and human health. But I digress! A chemist wading into marine sciences (1969–1975) A few days after my return to Seattle from India—and 15 months after I graduated from the UW—Fred told me to go immediately for an interview at the Montlake facility of the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries (BCF) located near UW’s Seattle campus. There was a temporary research position available for a PhD chemist. Without much preparation, I rushed to meet with scientists who had acquired a sub-contract from a larger Office of Naval Research (ONR) grant to study echolocation in porpoises at the Oceanic Institute in Hawaii. The chemical research in Seattle was to be focused on the composition of fatty deposits in the protruding forehead and over the peculiarly formed lower jaw bones of these marine mammals, which Kenneth S. Norris, the principal investigator, believed had something to do with echolocation and, therefore, dubbed these parts as “acoustic tissues” (Norris, 1975). I had never taken a biology class and had never heard of porpoises. I kept thinking of porcupines during my first job interview and wondered why a marine lab would want to study such a creature. However, I liked new challenges, and I needed a job. My future supervisor, Donald C. Malins, was a biochemist at the BCF conducting research on marine lipids. He told me that the 1-year project was already shortened by 2 months as an experienced marine chemist from the East Coast had turned down the job. They needed me to start the very next day, and I smiled and said that I was ready. That is how I landed my first job and went home to discover that the porpoise was the beloved dolphin that I had seen on a TV show. I was supported under the ONR contract, which was renewed for 7 years because of our promising findings about cetacean echolocation. During these early years of my career, I faced an almost-existential crisis after contracting a painful and debilitating disease—rheumatoid arthritis. My choices were limited: Discontinue my fledgling career or go on with a judicious but painful mix of work and rest. Once again, fate stepped in to help me. My physician said this chronic and unpredictable disease could be kept in check with medicines, a positive attitude and fortitude. My husband actively supported me and understood that giving up was not an option as it would shrink my world. And my colleagues were kind, allowing me the flexibility of work schedule and location—way ahead of the work–life concepts of flextime and teleconferencing that are in vogue today. This and my love of gardening allowed me to gain mental and physical strength, and I worked harder than ever. More importantly, I developed a deep understanding of the benefits of flexibility and freedom. These insights were immensely useful when I became a manager. I tried to support staff members struggling with choices between childcare, health issues, or other challenges—and in turn, I was able to retain a productive, creative, and dedicated workforce. As I did when I had first arrived at Caltech, I learned on the job by asking colleagues in the lab to refer me to papers and books on the fundamentals of biology and biochemistry, especially about marine lipids and their food-chain transfer in the marine ecosystem. Our research plan addressed three questions: What was the chemical composition of fat in the cetacean acoustic tissues compared to other fatty tissues (e.g. blubber). The results of tedious chemical separations using thin-layer chromatography, which separated compounds of different polarity, and subsequent analyses demonstrated that the fat in acoustic tissue was high in unusual low molecular weight branched (C5–C12) lipids (e.g. triacylglycerols and wax esters) (Varanasi and Malins, 1972). With the help of UW’s analytical chemistry lab, the mass spectral analysis of the unique lipids isolated from the acoustic tissues showed high concentrations of a specific isomer, 1,3-diisovaleroyl triglyceride (Varanasi et al., 1973), which made the fat in acoustic tissue largely resistant to enzymatic hydrolysis. This was essential to prevent release of the toxic isovaleric acid into the bloodstream of these echolocating marine mammals. How was this unusual fat, rich in toxic isovaleric acid, deposited only in acoustic tissues and not in other tissues (e.g. fatty blubber)? This was before the 1972 US Marine Mammal Protection Act, so we were able to get fresh tissues of a variety of recently dead echolocating cetaceans—such as Tursiops truncates, Phoecena Phocena, narwhale, beluga whale and sperm whale, etc.—from various aquariums and marine mammal laboratories. Using tissue slices, we demonstrated that these unique lipids were biosynthesized de novo in acoustic tissues from a dietary amino acid, iso-leucine, and not derived through the marine food chain (Malins and Varanasi, 1972). Why were these toxic compounds deposited only in “acoustic tissues”? This phase of research required measuring acoustic properties such as sound velocity and compressibility of the lipids in cetacean tissues. As I expanded my sphere of knowledge, publishing our research in peer-reviewed journals and gaining self-confidence, it was becoming easier to contact scientists from different fields to propose collaborations. I spent several weeks in the Applied Physics Labs (APL) at UW and Yale University with experimental physicists who could teach me to measure acoustic properties, compressibility, and the specific gravity of droplets of oil that I had carefully isolated from cetacean tissues (Varanasi et al., 1977). With the help of a friend, Waman Vijay Bhat, a Boeing Engineer, we were able to verify our calculations showing that the deposition of specialized lipids formed a three-dimensional matrix of ultrasonic velocities that constituted a sound lens (Varanasi et al., 1975) in these amazing echolocating animals (Figure 1). This lipid lens focuses sounds waves in a manner analogous to how a camera lens focuses light waves, and it was postulated by Norris (1975) that returning sound waves from a target object (echo) is received and focused through the mandibular canal where similar specialized lipids are distributed asymmetrically. Figure 1. Open in new tabDownload slide (a) Echolocation in cetaceans is facilitated by heterogenous distribution of unique lipids in the head (melon and mandibular tissues); (b) separation of lipids by thin-layer chromatography; and (c) a molecular model of unique 1,3-diisovaleroylglycerides [adapted from Varanasi et al. (1973, 1975)]. Figure 1. Open in new tabDownload slide (a) Echolocation in cetaceans is facilitated by heterogenous distribution of unique lipids in the head (melon and mandibular tissues); (b) separation of lipids by thin-layer chromatography; and (c) a molecular model of unique 1,3-diisovaleroylglycerides [adapted from Varanasi et al. (1973, 1975)]. During this 7-year journey, what began for me as an analysis of the chemical composition of marine mammal tissue led—through collaboration with biologists, chemists, biochemists, and biophysicists—to understanding a crucial survival mechanism for porpoises and whales in turbid waters, where visibility is poor, and they need “to see through” sound or echolocation. I believe that when we go beyond our own disciplines, beyond conventional thinking, and really begin “sleuthing” for clues, nature unlocks its secrets for us. Key research on fish exposed to oil spills (1975–1993) In 1970, the BCF was moved to the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) under the new name of National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), a line office of a new federal agency, NOAA. Under the newly formed NMFS, science and research functions were housed in regional science centres and the management and regulatory functions were in parallel regional and general counsel offices, respectively. This reorganization separated research and scientific advice from the potential influence of management and regulatory aspects of commercial fisheries but kept them close enough to meet the need for relevant and sound science to underpin the management and conservation of living marine resources (LMRs). I describe this organizational change because it affected my future career when I joined NMFS as a scientist and later became a science director. During the last 3 years of the research grant on echolocation (1972–1975), I had a part-time research faculty appointment in the chemistry department of Seattle University, which allowed me to support a string of bright undergraduate students in my lab. I used my unpaid time to learn about a new line of research initiated at Montlake Laboratory on the impacts of potential leaking of petroleum from the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, which had been installed to transport crude oil from the north slope of Alaska to a tanker terminal in Prince William Sound. The Northwest and Alaska Fisheries Center (NW&AFC) had received funding from the Outer Continental Shelf Ecosystem Assessment Project (OCSEAP) and had the authority to hire additional chemists and physiologists in its Environmental Conservation Division (ECD). In 1973, I had become a US citizen and was eligible to apply for a research chemist position in a federal agency. After due process of an open competition, in October 1975, NOAA offered me the permanent position to investigate the uptake and processing of petrochemicals in marine organisms. There were reports that fish sampled near oil spills did not show detectable concentrations of petrochemicals such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in their tissues. One hypothesis was that fish were unable to absorb these large hydrophobic (relatively insoluble in water) PAHs from their environment. The second hypothesis was that fish rapidly eliminated these compounds, either as is or after metabolic conversion to more water-soluble products as do terrestrial vertebrates. An early UW study reported that fish liver extracts had very low enzymatic capacity to convert or metabolize hydrophobic PAHs to more water-products (metabolites) compared to those in terrestrial vertebrates such as rat or mice. However, around the same time, my biologist and pathologist colleagues in ECD were reporting a strong correlation between levels of organic pollutants—especially cancer-causing PAHs present in the bottom sediment of highly contaminated sites in Puget Sound, Washington—and the prevalence of liver tumours in a sedentary bottom fish, the English sole (Parophrys vetulus). These results suggested that fish were ingesting and metabolizing carcinogenic PAHs present in the sediments (Varanasi et al., 1979, 1981, 1982). To address this apparently contradictory information, my team of one research assistant and an undergraduate chemistry student conducted laboratory studies with bottom fish sampled from relatively clean sites in the Puget Sound and treated with radiolabeled (tritium and carbon-14) PAHs including benzo(a)pyrene, which is a known carcinogen present in fossil fuels and in contaminated sediments in urban estuaries. While measuring radioactivity in tissues and bile of treated fish, we found that the PAHs were readily absorbed (or taken up) by the fish and extensively transformed in the liver to more water-soluble or hydrophilic metabolites that were excreted into the gallbladder (Varanasi et al., 1979; Stein et al., 1984). These in vivo findings explained why there was little or no deposition of the unchanged PAHs into edible tissues (e.g. muscle) of the fish. These results were confirmed with numerous fish species exposed to hydrocarbons in sediment, food and in the water column (Varanasi, 1989). Not bad for a chemist who started out confusing porpoises and porcupines! These results led my colleagues to develop an analytical method that could rapidly measure the fluorescent metabolites of PAHs in the bile fluid of fish (Krahn, 1981). This method became a key support tool for responding effectively to seafood safety and biological impact concerns following oil spills or after exposure to organic contaminants in urban estuaries. Transition from scientist to science enabler (1987–1993) During my first decade in the NW&AFC (1975–1985), I was ignorant of the structure and organization of the NMFS and NOAA. This changed dramatically in 1985 when I met Nancy Foster, a charismatic and visionary leader who was the first female chief of the Office of Protected Resources in NOAA Fisheries. I instantly became an admirer as I saw that she was genuine, strong, and an unconventional leader. She became my friend and a mentor until her untimely death in 2000. Her help was invaluable as I navigated the fisheries agency, first as a scientist and then as a manager in a male-dominated institution with a strong resistance to change. In 1987 when the ECD director resigned, Nancy encouraged me to apply for the position. As reluctant as I was to leave my thriving science career, Nancy convinced me that I needed to seize this opportunity to help our agency begin the important struggle to represent society’s demographics more fully. She believed absolutely in the physical and intellectual capability of women to undertake the rigours of field- and sea-going experiments. She further held that the proof of this fact would be abundantly clear when sufficient female staff and leaders were in the mix during natural resource crisis and controversies. During the late 1980s and into the early 1990s, the common refrain in federal and state agencies and in academia was that there were not enough qualified female candidates in the pipelines to fill high-level vacancies. She convinced me that numbers make a difference and women in leadership positions would provide role models to early-career female staff while winning over their stubborn but smart, male counterparts to the cause. I applied for the position against “advice” of many colleagues who believed that I had no chance of succeeding against several male candidates. But once I decided to compete for the position, I prepared my application with great care and detail outlining my various accomplishments and solicited several letters of support from allies who knew my work. This is an important lesson that when odds are stacked against you, you must not leave anything to chance. I make this point as I have had my fair share of reviewing poorly prepared applications from competent candidates. However, the transition from an active researcher to a division director was fraught with challenges, including being a female leader who was also a person of colour from India. Serendipitously, I met Carolyn Riley-Payne, a strategic personnel officer who taught me do’s and don’ts of management, and who became a life-long ally. I found to my surprise that even female staff did not have confidence that a woman could be a successful leader in a male-dominated division. But since I came up from the ranks, I knew on whom I could rely on to support me. This allowed me to leverage the diverse expertise of ECD scientists to bolster the understanding of mechanisms and the impact of contaminant exposure on marine life in Puget Sound, an important estuarine system in the State of Washington. I encouraged the development of state-of-the-art technology for emergency response during national and international oil spills. However, as the ECD director, my first and foremost challenge was securing a sustainable budget for the critical research and monitoring projects conducted by its excellent scientific staff. The primary mission of NMFS is to monitor and manage marine fisheries. But the budget to study and forecast impacts of chemical or biological contaminants on fish and invertebrate populations and their ecosystems was—and continues to be—a lower priority. I worked hard to be incisive and emphatic about the importance of ECD research in the overall mission of NMFS, which includes ensuring seafood safety while maintaining sustainable fishery stocks and protected species. I believed that it was important for me as a science manager to remain connected to some scholarly activity to be an effective leader. Therefore, when I became ECD director I continued overseeing my research projects, but that meant working long hours, delegating some of my work and networking with scientists in the pollution field. I had to balance these activities with my management duties and my passion to be a facilitator for younger scientists. I believe that capable science leaders at the helm of a scientific organization command more respect and productivity from the staff. This is true for any technical organization (Goodall, 2009). During this period, I gratefully accepted a recommendation by Robert J. Huggett at Virginia Institute of Marine Science to the CRC Press, which invited me to compile and publish a book on the state of knowledge about metabolism of PAHs in marine organisms. I also continued my collaborations with UW including serving on graduate thesis committees, teaching, and giving seminars. In 1980, the chair of the UW Chemistry department, my friend Alvin Kwiram whom I knew at Caltech, had invited me to become involved with the chemistry department. I ended up serving as an advisor for undergraduate students interested in environmental chemistry/biochemistry and who worked in ECD laboratories. Being a part of an academic institution and publishing kept me grounded in my love of science and mentoring of students, and it became a good place to remain active after my retirement from NOAA. In addition to networking with scientists, I quickly learned the importance of making our data available, transparent, and easy to understand for our vast partnership of stakeholders and users in the broad community. During this time, I accepted an invitation from Kathy Fletcher, the Executive Director of the influential non-governmental organization “People for Puget Sound”, to serve on its inaugural advisory board so that I could learn, firsthand, about the science needs of our regional stakeholders. During my first 2 years as director of ECD, we had faced threats to its existence during a government-wide cost-cutting initiative (A-76 study). The fact that our research on coastal and estuarine pollution was well-regarded and used by stakeholders played a strong role in its continued existence and support within NOAA Fisheries. Early on in my tenure as ECD director, two unexpected events dramatically influenced my career. The first happened in 1988, when NW&AFC was split into the Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AKFSC) and the NWFSC. It resulted in the ECD becoming an important part of the newly formed, smaller NWFSC. The new centre director, Richard (Dick) Berry, was very supportive of NWFSC scientists studying Columbia River salmon during their freshwater lifecycle, coastal and estuarine pollution, and seafood safety. He encouraged the three division directors to build new liaisons with NMFS headquarters as well as with other federal and state agencies to compete for funding. While it was not easy to acquire new funding, Dick’s support was a welcome development. The second career-influencing, albeit tragic, event occurred on 24 March 1989, when a massive oil spill occurred in a pristine inlet—Prince William Sound (PWS) in the Gulf of Alaska. NOAA was asked to help the federal government and state of Alaska with the Exxon Valdez oil spill (EVOS) emergency response and assessment of seafood contamination as well as natural resource damage assessment. Coincidentally, my book Metabolism of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Aquatic Environment (www.bitly.com/3p3jxPN) was released in May 1989. It detailed our research on bioavailability and metabolism of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) by marine organisms and included a broad review of the field by many well-respected scientists (Varanasi, 1989). This coincidence instantly provided visibility to the science being conducted in ECD, leading to our active involvement in the EVOS crisis affecting the valuable seafood industry and potentially harming subsistence fishing and traditional lifestyles of the indigenous communities of 15 villages around PWS. During and after the crisis, the ECD was at the forefront in providing technical assistance to NOAA for several years. I worked closely with Rolland (Rollie) A. Schmitten, the director of Northwest region of NMFS who was appreciative of our expertise in providing critical information to halibut and salmon fisheries in time for the opening of fishing seasons. However, while we stepped up to monitor and analyse seafood from impacted areas, our emergency budget increase was meagre as NOAA and other government agencies were involved in intense litigation with Exxon. A word about science budget in federal agencies. Most of US environmental and fisheries laws mandate that management and regulatory decisions must be supported by robust scientific underpinning. However, in a regulatory agency, science is often challenged as being too costly or slow, and requiring continuous validation for adequate funding. Science is inherently complex and ever-evolving hence often difficult to describe in the everyday language needed for legislative approval and funding allocation. My personal involvement in EVOS came from a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Exxon brokered by a senior NOAA colleague, Charles “Bud” Ehler, who was appointed as director of the federal government’s EVOS damage assessment. Bud was familiar with our expertise because ECD was a major contributor to NOAA’s National Status and Trends Programme that Bud started in 1986 and included contaminant monitoring of marine sediments and benthic fish and mussels in US coastal waters. ECD, which was responsible for monitoring bottom fish and sediments from 76 sites for a decade, had earlier data from a couple of sites in Alaska that were useful to demonstrate how pristine these sites were before the oil spill (Varanasi et al., 1989). The above MOU provided funding and responsibility to ECD to conduct analyses of seafood (from barnacles to shellfish, fish, and marine mammal tissues) harvested from the waters for Alaska’s Indigenous community’s subsistence fishing. This project was uniquely protected from litigation so the data could be immediately and openly available and not be sequestered pending litigation (Field et al., 1999). I felt honoured yet terrified that the ECD team had the responsibility of producing the potentially life-changing information for the subsistence community from around PWS about potential food contamination from the catastrophic oil spill. We invited the elders of these villages to our analytical laboratories in Seattle and demonstrated our rigorous “chain of custody” procedure to ensure that the incoming samples were securely stored prior to analysis. This tour was videotaped so that the residents of the villages could watch and be confident about the sanctity of their samples and our data. We followed up this trust-building visit by establishing a protocol where results would be released simultaneously to all concerned parties. Exxon resisted, saying we were obligated to report the data to them first. I disagreed and was supported by the NOAA leadership. Results from EVOS and its aftermath are described in several publications (Hom et al., 1999; Field et al., 1999). The deep distress felt by this subsistence fishing community for themselves and their children’s health sensitized me to the subtle difference between the voluntary risk—for our health or family—we all take when we are decision-makers contrasted to the vulnerability of communities put at risk by external agents or events. Here, I was learning how powerful science can be if used objectively but compassionately to help communities affected by environmental disasters. It was gratifying that our earlier laboratory findings demonstrating efficient PAH metabolism by aquatic vertebrates were validated when we examined thousands of muscle (edible) tissues and bile fluid from various fish species sampled from PWS and along the Alaskan coast after EVOS. Analytical results showed a high level of florescence due to PAH metabolites in the bile and minimal or no contamination in corresponding edible muscle tissue (Hom et al., 1999). In keeping with our earlier laboratory and field studies showing that invertebrate species such as mussels and clams could not metabolize aromatic contaminants efficiently, invertebrates from contaminated sites showed high levels of toxic PAHs and suffered high mortality (Figure 2). These results were used by managers of the Alaskan Oil Spill Health Task Force to determine the risks to Alaskan natives in the consumption of their subsistence seafood (from barnacles, molluscs to fish and even marine mammals). The use of these methods and understanding relative rates of bioconversion of PAHs to metabolites in vertebrates and invertebrates greatly improved real-time data needed to address the deep-seated public concerns over seafood safety (cited in Varanasi, 1995) and the closure and opening of fishing following major environmental disasters such as hurricanes (Hom et al., 2008) or oil spills, including the massive 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico (cited in Varanasi, 2013). Figure 2. Open in new tabDownload slide Schematic depiction of uptake, metabolism, and toxicity of PAHs in marine organisms [adapted from Varanasi (1989) and Hom et al. (1999)]. Figure 2. Open in new tabDownload slide Schematic depiction of uptake, metabolism, and toxicity of PAHs in marine organisms [adapted from Varanasi (1989) and Hom et al. (1999)]. The flip side of the story of PAH metabolism in vertebrates (fish, marine, and terrestrial mammals) is that during processing of carcinogenic PAHs, a small fraction of reactive intermediates binds to liver DNA (referred as PAH-DNA adducts). The formation of PAH-DNA adducts is one of the first steps leading to cancer (carcinogenesis) in PAH-exposed vertebrates, including humans. Hence through early research, coupled with the subsequent adaptation of a novel technique (radioactive P-32 post-labelling of DNA), we were able to show the presence of DNA-adducts in liver of fish sampled from contaminated sites compared to fish sampled from a relatively cleaner site in Puget Sound (Varanasi et al., 1989; Stein et al., 1987, 1990). Using these findings, combined with measurement of fluorescent PAH metabolites (Krahn et al., 1981) and early (pre-neoplastic or precancerous) liver lesions detected by colleagues (Myers et al., 2003), the ECD team helped to establish a cause-and-effect relationship between the high levels of PAHs and related polycyclic aromatic compounds in sediment and the prevalence of liver cancer in benthic fish from contaminated areas in Puget Sound. While assessing and speaking about contaminant research in Puget sound and its impacts, I encountered several remarkable women leaders who were interested in making important changes in environmental and ecological policies for the conservation of terrestrial and aquatic species and their ecosystems in Washington state. The most influential encounter was my meeting an environmental activist, Vim Wright, who was then the assistant director of UW’s Institute of Environmental Studies, and an esteemed scientist, Estella Leopold, who was a professor in the botany department. They took me under their wings as I learned about their successful fight to protect the Florissant fossil, exceptionally well-preserved insect, and plant fossil beds in Colorado, from development projects (Leopold and Meyer, 2012). Through them, I met more courageous environmental activists, policymakers, and scientists. I did not realize it then, but I was getting ready for the next step in my career. The lesson is to be open to making new connections even when one is busy because learning and broadening of horizons should never stop. Becoming science director (1994–2016) In 1993, I faced another monumental career choice. NWFSC’s inaugural director had retired, and NMFS was looking for a new director. On reflection, I realized that my life’s work and the careers of my colleagues and staff were dependent on the choice of the leader for the NWFSC. I also felt that the Centre needed an out-of-the-box leadership if it were to survive as a separate and fully accepted entity within NMFS. I was unsure if I was that leader, but I needed to step up and present my vision to the NMFS leadership. At the time, Rollie had become the NMFS director and Nancy was the deputy director. Both knew my strengths and weaknesses, so I plucked up enough courage to apply for the position of NWFSC director. I was selected after a customary lengthy procedure. NWFSC was created to expand scientific research and monitoring of the status of marine groundfish complex and anadromous fisheries of the PNW. Both were facing serious threats from uncontrolled and unmanaged anthropogenic factors including over-harvest. I assumed that my performance as ECD director during the EVOS crisis made me a viable candidate for the directorship of NWFSC. While I was not a traditional fishery scientist or manager, I had strong science and management credentials. I knew that I would have a short period during which to demonstrate that the NWFSC could be a viable science centre. That meant the centre would need to conduct more frequent and expanded fishery surveys and develop scientific advice for the West Coast groundfish complex needed by the agency and the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC), and strongly demanded by the stakeholders in PNW. Once again, I smiled and said I would do my best to meet such a goal while feeling the pressure of this challenge. I felt I had a tiger by its tail! In the sections that follow, I narrate the early history of NWFSC and highlight only a few critical strategies I used to establish and grow NWFSC as a viable unit within NMFS. However, during my tenure, the centre and I prevailed through unusual alliances of brilliant staff with academic partners, diverse and powerful well-wishers, dedicated co-managers of LMRs and their ecosystems. The perusal of NWFSC’s publication record (www.bitly.com3a1WZdT) provides details about the broad range of empirical and analytical research conducted at the Centre. The first decade as NWFSC director (1994–2004) When the NWFSC was created it received only a small increase in its operating budget. I was expected to reorganize my existing budget and staff to meet our new responsibilities. This was a tough challenge. My deputy director, Linda Jones, and I were a unique pair of female leaders within NMFS and its partners, the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) and Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission. We knew the challenges ahead as our performance was scrutinized with great scepticism. A male colleague from another centre told me to my face that it was good that a woman was given the leadership of the smallest centre of little consequence so she could manage it. I was shocked at this condescension but remembered the valuable advice that my grandmother gave me when I was perhaps 8 years old. I had come home crying because the other girls in my class were teasing me, calling me a bookworm and a teacher’s pet because I always topped the class-list, and was praised by my teacher. Instead of consoling me, my grandmother said I had to choose whether I wanted to be a leader or a follower. I have never forgotten this lesson and every time I feel hurt or angry because of a falsehood, slander, or marginalization, I ignore it or take appropriate action. The advice I pass on to young women aspiring to be leaders: Pick your battles judiciously so you will win the war for equality and justice. Do not be distracted by every slight or insult. Just rise above it. Remember also that not all detractors are unfeeling or unjust. They just need data or results to be convinced. But do not tolerate bullies, however powerful they are. Occasionally, we must all learn to be in an uncomfortable position to stand up for our values and our community. (Note: It is a sad commentary of our times that the 2018 report of National Academy of Sciences (www.bitly.com/3tEMhBN) shows that gender discrimination/denigration is still rampant in sciences resulting in women scientists leaving STEM fields and causing leaky pipeline and “brain drain”). Once again, an unexpected event occurred to give the NWFSC and me a much-needed boost. The Centre’s budget had unexpectedly received a $1.5 million permanent infusion through Senator Mark Hatfield with a requirement to utilize the funding increase largely for staff and projects in our facility in the Hatfield Center in Newport, OR. This much-needed infusion of funds with an addition of a few full-time, permanent positions allowed us to establish a new division, Fishery Resource and Monitoring (FRAM). I was able to recruit a stock assessment expert Richard (Rick) Methot as its first director, who moved from AKFSC on the condition that he retained his office in Seattle. Because of the strings attached to the additional funding received by NWFSC, we had to place most of newly hired staff of FRAM in our Newport facility, while its director remained in Seattle making it a challenging situation. To populate our Newport station, which had the benefit of being close to Oregon State University and being closer to the fishing industry and the PFMC, we offered the staff in Seattle (Montlake Laboratory) the opportunity to move to Newport. Over the years, we attracted many noteworthy scientists to our Newport facility, and NWFSC firmed up its footprint in the Pacific Northwest. Unusual allies and partnerships (1994–2004) Building the Centre’s stock assessment capacity and increasing the frequency and range of West Coast groundfish surveys were my highest priorities. In the following two subsections, I describe strategies, successes, and challenges to meet these priorities. I struggled a great deal to expand NWFSC’s capability by trying to recruit stock assessment experts or even junior staff from within the agency. The NMFS leadership at the national headquarters played a strong, deciding role about the movement of these highly specialized analysts. During this period, I made a few strategic errors in not clearly understanding the underlying culture and politics. In my anxiety to build up NWFSC, I hurt a few good colleagues, a mistake that I regret to this day. The lesson here is never to lose sight of your values and act precipitously without thoroughly understanding the motives and agendas of those around you and above you in management and always consider the long-term consequences of your actions. Academic partnership I decided that instead of expending my energy to build scientific expertise only for groundfish or salmon programmes in a piecemeal fashion, I should also expand the Centre’s expertise in habitat and environmental sciences beyond our existing expertise in chemical contaminants so that we had a full complement of disciplines and expertise to address ecosystem-wide challenges. As I could not break into existing cliques on my own, I chose to take a long view and build new networks with the help of a few trusted allies and well-wishers. I approached a long-time colleague William (Bill) E. Cooper at Michigan State University, with whom I had worked on environmental risk models and served in early 1990 on a subpanel on reauthorization of the Clean Water Act. I persuaded him to help review NWFSC’s existing scientific capacity and to help us recruit new staff. Bill’s expertise and strong and diverse connections with academic and governmental agency scientists also helped me in later years when each science centre underwent external programme reviews. Bill connected me with ecologists and modellers in various universities, including my alma mater, UW. We began to forge a deeper relationship with UW’s fishery department, now known as the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences (SAFS). I worked with David Armstrong (then SAFS Director) to establish an NWFSC-sponsored faculty position in quantitative science to bring Andre Punt, a well-known stock assessment expert and a wonderful teacher in SAFS to create a cohort of graduate students who could intern with Rick and the few NWFSC experts in FRAM to increase future expertise in stock assessments within NWFSC and, eventually, NOAA Fisheries. This arrangement with SAFS was successful beyond expectations. It spawned many new ventures with UW as NWFSC expanded its expertise. This model of supporting faculty positions in academic institutions to grow future agency scientists was eventually well received by NMFS/NOAA. Even so, it took almost a decade before NWFSC had a cadre of expert stock-assessment analysts and modellers who were well recognized by the agency and beyond (Punt et al., 2007; Cope and Punt, 2009, 2011; Haltuch and Punt, 2011). Once we had a sufficient pool of experts and strong institutional partnerships, NWFSC became a desirable research centre that could better attract intellectual talent in diverse disciplines. Partnership with fishing industry and Pacific Fishery Management Council In the 1990s, groundfish populations all along the US West Coast began to decline, causing economic upheaval for fishery-dependent communities. As I stepped into the NWFSC director’s position, I faced this growing crisis. I realized that, as the lead centre responsible for the NMFS West Coast groundfish programme, our science had to withstand scrutiny from peer reviews and be transparent to the impacted communities. The anguish and anger of the fishing community had translated into letters to state and federal legislators and even to the president. It was very tough for FRAM’s small, relatively new team. We did not know each other well and communication within the Centre and the management staff in the regional office was difficult. But ultimately, all parties had the same goal of sustainable resource management using the best available science. I had to figure out a way to break the impasse and communicate directly with fishing community leaders to understand their concerns while explaining our constraints and protecting the integrity of science. Based on the advice of a well-wisher, I sought out Robert W. Schoning, a former NMFS director who had the reputation of being a straight-shooter and who had strong connections with fishing community leaders. I hired Bob as a part-time adviser/consultant and, with his help, held many meetings to find ways to improve communication with the fishing community. At the same time, I met with Larry Six, executive director of PFMC, to learn and plan how best to standardize review processes for stock assessments conducted by individual scientists. Based on discussions with all concerned parties, it was clear to me that we should eventually develop a rigorous and transparent process that would produce convincing, even if unwelcome, scientific and management advice based on stock assessment as well as economic impact assessment for each groundfish fish stock complex. During this difficult time, I appreciated that leaders of the fishing community, seafood processors and management bodies helped me understand their concerns, taught me about the vagaries of the seasonal fishing economy, invited me to visit their boats (here, I think they were also testing my willingness and ability to navigate inside small and large fishing vessels), and processing plants, and exchanged ideas about how we could move forward. I should mention here that throughout my career, I wore traditional Indian sarees combined with a western jacket, which created some consternation as to how I would safely navigate narrow stairwells of ships. I switched to another Indian outfit with kameez and pantaloons, which created stir in the Centre that I had switched to wearing pants, and many staff stopped by my office on some pretext to confirm. I remember Barry Fisher, a leading figure in the west coast groundfish community, saying that they can always pick me out at a crowded meeting to know I was present. I used to be commended for wearing my traditional dress, but I chose to wear familiar clothing just to avoid shopping and learning what was in or out in women’s business attire. This was during the times when women were expected to wear skirts when visiting the US Capitol. This was before the “pantsuit” generation! Getting back to the West Coast groundfish story, many processes were standardized over the years including fishery-dependent data collection from logbooks across three states. Data from fishery-independent surveys were communicated in open meetings so the interested parties could ask related questions. These meetings were heavily attended in the beginning but as trust increased, the attendance decreased. Over the decade and half of my tenure, the Centre formed a strong partnership with the groundfish community and NMFS managers in developing innovative fishery management tools (e.g. gear modifications, onboard observers, buyback initiative to reduce fishing vessels, reducing bycatch, and off-limits fishing areas) and increased survey frequency and range, resulting in the West Coast groundfish populations to rebound steadily (Wetzel and Punt, 2016; New Fishing Opportunities Emerge from Resurgence of West Coast Groundfish, 2018, www.bitly.com/3tENqt5). While it was not my goal to become a part of the inner circle of the groundfish community, I believe that all sides developed mutual respect for each other’s perspectives by graduating from mere arguing to convincing and ultimately persuading each other about their unique expertise, and the constraints under which they operated. Many well-known leaders supported and even advocated for the Centre’s need for more funding and ship time. During this period, I met Penelope (Penny) Dalton who was the senior member of professional staff of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation in Washington, DC. Penny, who became an ally, helped me navigate the tricky waters of communicating with legislators about the progress and needs of the West Coast groundfish programme. Eventually, NOAA commissioned a state-of-the-art fisheries research vessel, Bell Shimada, dedicated to conducting fisheries surveys on the West Coast. And a new fisheries research building for NWFSC was built in Newport, named the Capt. Barry Fisher Building in the memory of our mutually beneficial partnership. There are many lessons here but the chief amongst them is to get help of well-connected, reputable, and independent advisers as you enter a new territory, and actively listen and learn from them to expand your reach. Expanding the salmon programme (1994–2004) If the groundfish programme is NWFSC’s “bread and butter”, then the salmon programme is its soul. PNW salmon have unparalleled cultural and economic importance. By the mid-90s, NWFSC had significant expertise in empirical research investigating hatchery practices and the migration of salmon runs through the Columbia River system of dams. The Centre had expanded its expertise in genetics with the addition of Robin Waples whose research is described in the following section. And the early funding increase for the Newport station helped to initiate research on salmon behaviour and survival in the Columbia river estuarine system and coastal ocean. But we did not have sufficient analytical expertise to address the cumulative impact of all factors including over-harvesting, degraded habitats, hatcheries, hydropower, and ocean conditions on the entire life cycle of these iconic species. Once again, I found myself in the middle of a contentious crisis because of declining salmon populations and the urgent necessity of developing a comprehensive salmon life cycle model and research framework. Academic partnership—stepping into an inferno of duelling models With the support of NMFS-NW regional administrator, William Stelle, and with a promise of additional funding, my colleagues and I stepped up—with trepidation and excitement—to address cumulative risk assessment of obstacles faced by salmon through their entire life cycle. With the help of Bill Cooper and Centre scientist Mary Ruckelshaus, we recruited a UW faculty member Peter Kareiva to help build up the Centre’s analytical capacity. It was an alliance of mutual necessity. Peter’s unique modelling talents helped us recruit a cadre of bright young analysts who worked under Peter’s mentorship. They operated a sophisticated but simple cumulative risk assessment model to show that the removal of Snake River dams alone would not result in a significant increase in declining Chinook salmon populations (Kareiva et al., 2000; McClure et al., 2003). This was a highly controversial finding, summarily rejected by environmental groups and Indigenous communities who strongly advocated removal of dams. As Centre director, I also took some heat from colleagues at the NMFS Office of Protected Resources and even from other federal agencies and conservation groups. But I and most NWFSC scientists believed that we must follow the science, regardless of the consequences or our personal beliefs. Many of these issues were highly politicized and there was great pressure to pick sides in these debates. However, early on as a science leader within NMFS, I had made a conscious decision that we would follow the science, that we would be transparent about our research and results, and that our findings would be issued regardless of whether they were supportive of the views of a particular party. I believe that this value decision allowed the Centre to be recognized as a leading source for sound science during these difficult policy debates. I feel happy that during this period, we had recruited and trained an outstanding team of ecologists and modellers who worked together on many contentious ecological challenges with cutting-edge science for several decades, building credibility for the Centre’s science regionally and nationally. Several of them are currently in important leadership positions within and outside NOAA. Working with NOAA Fisheries management and regulatory partners The story in this section was initiated by an unusual partnership of scientists, attorneys, and managers in NMFS Northwest region, just before I became the director of NWFSC. My role was to facilitate this bold and proactive venture by ensuring the management and policy decisions that influenced PNW salmon were supported by a robust and timely scientific underpinning, and that scientists were supported by adequate funding. I have described this story in some detail in an earlier publication (Varanasi, 2013) and it is expertly described in Waples (2020). Briefly, the first PNW petitions to list several populations of salmon for protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) were submitted to NMFS in the early 1990s. At the request of NMFS managers, Robin crafted an innovative strategy to identify major segments—Evolutionarily Significant Units (ESUs)—based on genetic and spatial diversity (Waples, 1995). Between 1992 and 1994, the NWFSC conducted several additional status reviews triggered by petitions in a conventional manner. But it soon became apparent that it would be much more efficient to conduct comprehensive species level (i.e. chinook, Coho, sockeye, chum, pink) status reviews that encompassed the full geographic range of populations that spawn in watersheds of the western United States—and to do so systematically. Additional funding was obtained by NMFS leadership, which enabled compilation of critical scientific information by a large team of scientists over 5 years to identify the presence of 52 ESUs throughout the western region of the United States; 27 of these ESUs were eventually listed for protection under the ESA (Good et al., 2005). This proactive action by scientists to identify declining salmon populations could only be undertaken with the support of agency managers and policy leaders who were convinced to take a long view for sustainable management and conservation. Partnership with state and local agencies (2000–2010) The listing of West Coast salmon ESUs triggered recovery planning. In the initial phase, NWFSC was given the lead to develop the technical underpinning for factors that affected recovery of the listed species (Good et al., 2007). Scientists began the complicated process of addressing recovery planning in the Puget Sound, an important estuary in our backyard. At this point, the Centre had come of age in the NMFS family. We were ploughing new ground, working with NMFS regional managers and with Mike Tillman, my counterpart in SWFSC whom I considered my ally. I enjoyed working with Mike as we were able to openly discuss funding, staffing and projects our two science centres shared in the California Current marine ecosystem. The first technical recovery team (TRT) for listed Chinook salmon in Puget sound set a gold standard for the remaining TRTs along the West Coast (Ruckelshaus et al., 2006). As I mentioned before, any meaningful recovery or restoration effort should begin with collection of baseline information about the status of the species or ESU and its ecosystem. This “front-loading” of scientific information can be broad-scale or specific depending on the funding and purpose of such data collection (Varanasi, 2013). Washington State’s bold and pragmatic Governor Christine (Chris) Gregoire established the Puget Sound Partnership (PSP) to coordinate the recovery of depleted species and the restoration of the Puget Sound Ecosystem by various state agencies. Chris appointed iconic William D. Ruckelshaus and Billy Frank Jr at the helm of the PSP leadership council. It was an opportunity of a lifetime for me and NWFSC when asked to take leadership of the science coordination. I felt proud that the NWFSC team got input from hundreds of scientists on the Puget Sound ecosystem in a synthesis report “Sound Science” (McClure and Ruckelshaus, 2007). This was a foundational document that provided the scientific underpinning as the first step in developing an action plan for achieving ecosystem-based recovery and restoration of Puget Sound. One of our collaborators, who knew of the struggles to get different factions to agree on the Puget Sound chinook recovery plan in 2007, observed that I was like a spouse who only acknowledges happy memories on the 25th wedding anniversary and forgets all past quarrels and disagreements. It is true that chronic autoimmune disease, my bicultural upbringing, and reflections over Maxwell Maltz’s book, Psycho-cybernetics (1960) have trained me to focus my attention on the positive and not to dwell on the negative that was beyond my control. As PSP (https://psp.wa.gov) matured and new leaders, such as my friend Martha Kongsgaard, entered the fray, I stayed on to serve on the PSP’s inaugural science panel. NWFSC continued to provide scientific underpinning to restoration actions for the Puget sound. I learned new lessons in leadership such as consensus building, keeping emotions under control to listen actively and compassionately to different viewpoints and to have courage. These amazing leaders were generous with their time, counsel, and support as I struggled to balance NMFS and PNW regional priorities for NWFSC’s expertise. Working with tribal nations and learning cross-cultural communication I grew up in India during the last few years of British rule and knew that my maternal grandparents’ beautiful home in Bihar, India was forcibly occupied by British officers during World War II. Also, as a child, I was deeply affected by stories of Mahatma Gandhi’s Satyagraha (non-violent resistance) movement for India’s independence. I cannot say if these early experiences of colonialism or my Eastern upbringing made me receptive to Indigenous communities and their traditional knowledge, but I believe so. My earlier experience working with Indigenous subsistence community impacted by EVOS taught me the importance of cross-cultural communication (Field et al., 1999). Working on salmon issues, I recognized that the tribal nations were co-managers of the salmon fishery and users of our science. Our science was not always accepted by the tribes. I wanted to learn about how to integrate their traditional knowledge of the natural world into NMFS science. I wanted to have open dialogue with members of tribal nations in PNW and learn of their concerns. In 1996, I prevailed upon a good friend, William (Bill) H. Rodgers Jr, an eminent environmental and Indian law professor at UW, to help make introductions with Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission fisheries managers in the tribal nations of Yakama, Warm Springs, Umatilla, and Nez Perce. We visited their headquarters on the tribal lands. I felt welcomed but was also on trial, as Bill told me later. Bill coached me to listen carefully and quietly, and wait until I hear the answer to my question. I was told that my being from India and my travelling with Bill gave us an opening that would not be generally accorded to traditional NMFS science director. We went on an adventurous tour in a metal-bottomed small boat through the Yakima River in sweltering heat and walked through rough terrain. I appreciated the hospitality of my hosts on these four reservations. My interest during this visit was to learn how we could best communicate our scientific research and results to them and what I could do as the science director to improve our relationship. The tribal leaders told me several times to provide more research and educational opportunities to tribal students. On return from this mind-broadening and heartfelt visit, I worked with the president of the Northwest Indian College (NWIC) and NOAA and the Department of Commerce officials to help execute a historic agreement (www.bitly.com/39ZOJLd) in 2000 to create the National Indian Center for Marine and Environmental Research and Education (NICMERE). The MOU was to be funded with a $2 million strategic plan that would have provided a network of teachers on-site at the reservations and online from NWFSC and NWIC to provide training in natural resource science and management to tribal students in various formats. But national politics intervened as the dramatic national election in 2000 resulted in a change of administration and the rescinding of the promised funding. While my collaborators and I were deeply disappointed, we also knew that US federal agencies are funded through legislative process, which can be dominated by partisan politics. Over the years, we struggled to keep to the spirit of the MOU by working with a well-respected educator, Virginia Bill, from NWIC to help Centre’s scientists to develop better understanding and cross-cultural communication skills as we hosted tribal student interns at the Centre or partnered with Indigenous communities on salmon habitat and harmful algal bloom (HAB) outbreaks in PNW. The lessons from these encounters are many and are interspersed in the above section. But the biggest lesson for me was being acutely appreciative of the Indigenous culture that considers humans as a part of nature and believes in reciprocal healing. Partnering with staff to manage change The above examples of unusual alliances and partnerships were successful because NWFSC staff and I were able to develop a shared vision to provide the best scientific underpinning for management and conservation of LMR and their ecosystems in the PNW. Here, I describe the story of partnering with the Centre staff. A few months into my new leadership position in 1994, I was drafted to serve on a task force to assist the NMFS leadership in a major reorganization in response to staff and stakeholder feedback. The year-long assignment took us to all NMFS facilities. This helped me understand how different parts of NMFS worked well (or did not), and to gain a new perspective about how to manage the change in face of resistance and scepticism. In 1998, I began the process of reorganizing NWFSC to meet its expanded responsibilities with limited resources. Just as I had found during NMFS restructuring, NWFSC staff at all levels asked for increased communication and transparency in our decision-making that affected their future. I sought help from organization and leadership development expert Cindy Zook, whose work ethic and skills I had come to admire during the NMFS restructuring. Cindy worked with me and centre staff, providing mentorship and support on how to lead and navigate the turbulent waters of change and develop an improved communication and operational plan. Simultaneously, I worked with senior scientists and managers to launch several innovative initiatives to provide opportunities for professional growth for staff. Below are brief descriptions of two of the most successful initiatives. Internal Grants Programme As described in earlier sections, we had successfully recruited and retained a team of bright young scientists, partly because they could make meaningful contributions to the stewardship of LMR, and partly because within NOAA science was valued. But we needed to provide some funding opportunity for them to conduct innovative and independent research even within the restrictive framework of a federal agency. In 2000, I asked the Centre’s senior scientists and managers to design an Internal Grant Programme (IGP) that would encourage staff to submit proposals with their creative ideas. As described by Waples (2016), who managed the IGP with the help of a rotating panel of NWFSC scientists, the objectives of IGP were: professional development of junior scientists; rejuvenating careers of more senior scientists; teaching effective grant-writing skills; promoting a diverse array of research projects; and encouraging interdisciplinary and inter-divisional research collaborations. This was our most successful staff-driven initiative, lasting from 2001 to 2011. According to Robin, the winning IGP’s projects have produced over 110 peer-reviewed publications and over 250 scientific presentations. The Centre’s investment over a decade brought in almost nine times the funding in external grants based at least in part on results from IGP. In 2004, the US Department of Commerce singled out the NWFSC’s IGP as an outstanding example of an innovative and cost-effective way to address a key theme in the President’s Management Agenda: Strategic Management of Human Capital. Seminar series (Monster Seminar Jam) Our limited travel budgets made it difficult to send scientists, especially junior scientists, to scientific conferences where they could present papers and meet peers and leaders in their disciplines. While such practice is encouraged in an academic setting, it was often hard to convince our agency hierarchy that such conferences were critical for professional growth, which enhances our problem-solving skills needed to work with regional partners and stakeholders. After some discussion with active researchers in the Centre, I decided that if we could not send Centre’s staff to scientific conferences, we should give them similar experiences right at home by bringing in leading scientists in various disciplines to give seminars and meet with staff scientists. Instead of running the seminar series from the Centre director’s office, I provided a small amount of funding and requested our research staff to organize a weekly or monthly seminar series on topical issues of their choice, invite as broad or small of an audience as they would like, and host leading scientists to spend a couple of days at the Centre. This staff-run programme is now operated jointly with UW’s SAFS to engage a wider audience. There has never been a dearth of topics, and seminar speakers often told me they were impressed at the breadth of scientific programmes and the calibre of scientists working in NWFSC. New partnerships during my last 6 years at NOAA (2005–2010) Centre of excellence for Ocean and Human Health It was my dream to have a full complement of disciplines and expertise in NWFSC to address ecosystem-wide challenges. In 1996, the hiring of Vera Trainer strengthened our expertise in HABs and biotoxins whose outbreaks on the West Coast were becoming more frequent. HABs pose threats to the health of marine organisms—and to people via seafood consumption—and cause potential loss of revenue for the fishing industry and restaurants (Trainer et al., 2012). NWFSC’s combined expertise in chemical contaminants, HABs, and microbial pollution made the Centre qualified as one of three NOAA centres of excellence to participate in the Ocean and Human Health (OHH) Initiative, a new federal endeavour that also selected four academic centres of excellence to raise awareness of the important role that oceans and estuaries play in human health and well-being. This innovative programme brought Centre’s scientists to work closely with NOAA colleagues from other line offices, and with academic OHH centres leading to cross-fertilization of ideas and collaborative projects. My interest in forging unusual partnerships also resulted in my own appointments on important regional and NOAA-wide projects (Solomon et al., 2009). Under the OHH programme, NWFSC scientists and collaborators used innovative technology to develop early warning indicators for seafood contamination and made them available to state health agencies and other partners, including tribal nations in the PNW to reduce, if not altogether prevent, the public health crises (Erdner et al., 2008). Leading the West Coast OHH programme began to shift my own thinking. I started to realize that a much stronger inducement was needed to motivate the public and policymakers to conserve wilderness and green and blue spaces rather than focusing attention on the risks posed by environmental degradation. Personally, I was ready for a paradigm shift in my thinking and career. Stepping up to the final call of duty (2008–2010) From 1994 to 2008, the NWFSC staff increased from ∼150 to 400 with steadily increasing percentage of women scientists representing diverse disciplines and expertise needed for a “full service” vibrant science centre making impactful contributions. As I was preparing to retire, I received an urgent request from the NMFS directorate to oversee SWFSC while they searched for a permanent director. After some hesitation, I decided that this was an opportunity to build a lasting science partnership between the two centres working in the California Current marine ecosystem. I felt that this unusual assignment of my being at the helm of both NWFSC and SWFSC centres was an endorsement from NMFS leadership that would be a fitting end to my 35 exciting and often-turbulent years with NMFS. I was encouraged and supported in this decision by my trusted ally John Stein, who had worked with me since 1981 and was the NWFSC deputy director. So, I stepped into the last adventure of my career with NOAA to mentor and work with SWFSC’s incoming deputy, Kristen Koch. It was sweetly ironic that at the beginning and the end of my career I worked with female deputy directors. In both cases, we surprised our male colleagues by running, developing, or even expanding a fisheries science centre. During my 18-month tenure at SWFSC, we conducted active listening sessions with all units of SWFSC and developed a document identifying challenges and opportunities so Kristen can support and advise the incoming permanent director, Francisco Werner. Once again, learning on the job with the help of SWFSC senior staff, I dealt with contentious, multinational issues involving highly migratory species and coastal pelagic species. I also worked with both deputy directors to develop a set of operating agreements between various units of NMFS on the West Coast and Pacific Islands, which I understand is used as a roadmap by the new leaders. Parting thoughts about my NOAA tenure While I have focused this essay on the science because my research and leadership positions dealt directly with that, I would be remiss to leave out the profound importance of administrative and outreach staff. I realized early on that I did not have much aptitude for administrative details and had too many ideas for the outreach. Therefore, we recruited highly capable administrative and outreach staff to help inspire and drive changes at all levels of the organization and with our external stakeholders. I have described in detail my role as a researcher and science director in the broad field of marine fisheries, but until now I have not emphasized my passion for mentoring students at all levels including serving on the inaugural advisory board of Seattle Girls’School committed to early development of courageous leaders (https://www.seatllegirlsschool.org). Except for a few dark periods when working with academic partners was frowned upon, NOAA/NMFS encouraged hosting of student interns and young scholars in our laboratories. My academic colleagues also afforded me opportunities to give talks and hold clinics for graduate and undergraduate students in their institutions. Over the decades, many of these students became NWFSC employees and in turn have been mentoring the next generations of students. In reflecting on my four decades of commitment to equality, I feel that NOAA has continued its mission to attract many brilliant women in diverse fields. This is reflected in a story celebrating NOAA’s 50th anniversary “In Their Own Words: Women Doing NOAA's Work” (www.bitly.com/3aK1pVX) in 2020. In my personal journey, I have been helped by both male and female allies and well-wishers in diverse fields, but here I specifically acknowledge my female allies and mentors to dispel the myth that women are not team players and do not support each other. Many of these “grand old women” have become lifelong friends and are an integral part of my story. I could only mention a few by name, but they will recognize their influence as they read this essay (Yang et al., 2019). It is important to reach out to make a broader circle of allies whose values resonate with you, because as you climb the ladder, you will need people you can trust and with whom you can be at ease. Life—and work—after NOAA (2011-present) Throughout my career, I was involved in various projects with UW. So, when Dean Lisa Graumlich invited me to serve as a resident scholar in the College of the Environment, it seemed a natural fit. I wanted to devote my time in new learning to build on my accumulated expertise. From 2012 to 2015, I co-taught a class with Bill Rodgers at the UW School of Law on Coastal and Ocean Law aka “our oceans in legal crisis”. While I was familiar with the multitude of lawsuits NMFS encounters in any given year, teaching law students with Bill crystallized my thoughts about critical applications of science as a legal requirement/tool that demands that the best available science must underpin implementation of the nation’s environmental and conservation laws. The students wrote papers on topics that ranged from ocean acidification to marine debris and mineral extraction, and international whaling rights and laws. My former NOAA colleagues were a great help to students who wanted to delve into a particular case as they wrote term papers. I published my first invited paper in a law journal on the importance of front-loading of science and baseline information prior to degradation or restoration of ecosystems to support natural resource laws and policies (Varanasi, 2013). One of my unrealized dreams was to collaborate with the fishery and environmental science community in India. I had occasionally collaborated with visiting Indian scientists at NWFSC (Krishnakumar et al., 1994) and during my appointment on the Marine Environmental Quality working group of the North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES) when the unforgettable Warren S. Wooster was the inaugural chair. Then in 2010, Ned Cyr, the director of the NMFS Office of Science and Technology, invited me to help expand an existing MOU between NOAA and India’s Ministry of Earth Sciences to include collaboration with Indian fishery science institutions. NOAA has a long history of collaboration with Indian oceanographic and meteorological agencies to study climate and weather but not LMRs. Ned thought that my Indian heritage and cross-cultural understanding, as well as my position as a senior US fisheries scientist placed me in a unique position to broker a new partnership. From 2011 to 2020, I enjoyed serving as an advisor and a co-PI on technical cooperation in the development of predictive capabilities on marine fisheries and HABs of the Indian seas with the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) and the Centre for Marine Living Resources and Ecology. Together with these Indian institutions, we organized annual workshops between scientists from India and the United States as well as planned joint projects and training cruises aboard NOAA and Indian fisheries research vessels. These collaborations led to a deeper understanding of mechanisms underlying HAB events in India and helped India increase its scientific capacity to assess coastal and ocean fisheries (Baliarsingh et al., 2016; Holmes et al., in press). The latter work has developed the basis for modelling effects of climate change on Indian sardine fisheries that will be instrumental in furthering the NMFS mission related to fisheries management and will address important conservation goals as part of the UN Decade of Ocean Sciences (2021–2030). I had steadfast support from our Indian colleagues, such as INCOIS director Satheesh Shenoi, as we promoted scientist exchanges, including the training of young Indian scientists. I sincerely hope that these efforts will lead to more international scientific journeys such as mine. Lastly, I have further explored my growing conviction that once an aquatic or terrestrial ecosystem is damaged, it is nearly impossible to return it to its original state. I know from experience that competing for funding to conserve relatively healthy ecosystems is more difficult because our environmental laws are largely focused on recovering depleted species and restoring degraded habitats as there is public pressure for such actions. Serendipitously in 2015, Howard Frumkin, then the dean of UW’s School of Public Health, invited me to join a newly formed group, Nature and Health, which works to evaluate the interaction between nature and human health (Frumkin et al., 2017). I now serve on the steering committee of this group (https://natureandhealth.uw.edu). I believe that the emerging field of Nature and Health can be a game-changer in helping us focus our attention to conserve, maintain, and even expand healthy ecosystems. But we need to convince public and policymakers about scientific evidence demonstrating the health benefits from exposure to nature (wilderness to green and blue spaces) and convince the public of the value of reciprocal healing of nature and people (Varanasi, 2020). As we experience unprecedented global isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, people are more readily accepting that contact with nature is necessary for good health and therefore, may be more amenable to accept that human health and ecological health are intricately inter-connected (www.ilri.org/preventing-next-pandemic). I believe that conserving ecosystems is a more powerful and, in the long run, a more practical approach for the health and well-being of people and the planet. From my childhood days to the present, I am fortunate beyond my expectations for the never-ending opportunities to be a sleuth and storyteller, and to navigate the uncharted waters of discovery. I hope my journey convinces many early-career researchers, aspiring natural resource managers and conservationists that there are many paths to reach their goals, and to choose the one that resonates with their inner selves. I believe that the journey should be as much fun, and as fulfilling, as reaching the goalpost, which may shift and thereby make life more challenging and interesting. I end this essay with a story of my visit in the late 1980s to my all-girls’ school, S.D.D.R. Shala in Mumbai. I was pleased to find that the school was still vibrant with girls from the middle- and lower-economic strata. Before I spoke to the school assembly, the head of the school requested that I tell the students that hard work was the most important attribute for success. However, as I looked at the young hopeful faces, I could not help but tell them that “nothing great is ever achieved without enthusiasm because enthusiasm urges you to do your best”. Supplementary data Supplementary material is available at the ICESJMS online version of the manuscript. Data availability The data underlying this article are available in the article. Food for Thought articles are essays in which the author provides their perspective on a research area, topic, or issue. They are intended to provide contributors with a forum through which to air their own views and experiences, with few of the constraints that govern standard research articles. This Food for Thought article is one in a series solicited from leading figures in the fisheries and aquatic sciences community. The objective is to offer lessons and insights from their careers in an accessible and pedagogical form from which the community, and particularly early-career scientists, will benefit. The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) and Oxford University Press are pleased to make these Food for Thought articles immediately available as free access documents. Acknowledgements I thank Marc Mangel for encouraging me to write this essay and connecting me with Howard Browman. Words are inadequate to express my deep appreciation to Howard for his gracious invitation in early 2018, for his gentle nudging, and his help as I struggled to complete this essay covering my long, meandering career in marine science and management. As mentioned, I am unable to individually thank many of my colleagues and well-wishers who have helped me in countless ways. Here I am focusing on those folks who helped me in writing this essay. My special thanks go to editor/author friends, Nirmala Bhat, Hieu Phan, and Candace Robb, who took my rough draft and helped me refine it with a detailed eye (NB) and provided magical edits (HP&CR) to make the story flow better, and to Su Kim, the graphic artist who skillfully transformed old data and ideas into figures. 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TI - Casting a wide net and making the most of the catch
JF - ICES Journal of Marine Science
DO - 10.1093/icesjms/fsab023
DA - 2021-02-17
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/casting-a-wide-net-and-making-the-most-of-the-catch-1GZHSLNhJy
SP - 1
EP - 1
VL - Advance Article
IS - 
DP - DeepDyve
ER -