Roland Wigley was born in 1923 in New Jersey. He studied at the University of Maine at Orono, where his college career was interrupted by World War II. He served in the Army Air Corps during the war. He returned to the University of Maine after the war and received his PhD from Cornell University, where he did a dissertation on the life history of the sea lamprey of Cayuga Lake. He began working for the U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries as student in 1949 and was hired in a permanent capacity in 1954. His first research project was the haddock food study.

Ron Goldberg was born in Boston, Massachusetts on July 2, 1952. He moved to New Jersey at the age of 11 where his love of the ocean and its' mysteries developed. He credits inspirational teachers in high school and college with cultivating his interest in marine science . He returned to Boston to study at Northeastern University. Through the University's co-op program, he worked for the EPA, the Northeastern Lab, and the Milford Laboratory. He was hired at Milford in 1975 and retired after 40 years in 2015. He now lives in Cheshire, Connecticut.

Dr. Rusty Brainard began work for NOAA on the first day he graduated from Texas A&M University in May of 1981. Shortly thereafter he was assigned as Station Chief for the Geophysical Monitoring for Climatic Change Station at the South Pole, Antarctica. From 1984-2002, he was based at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in Monterey, California studying

Dr. Russell Brown was born in Farmingdale, New York and grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland. He earned his Bachelor’s in Fisheries and Wildlife from Cornell University and his Master’s degree and PhD. from Michigan State University. In 1994, Dr. Brown began working at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center on groundfish surveys. He also was involved with Atlantic salmon and was the Chief Scientific Adviser to the U.S. delegation to NASCO. As of this interview in 2016, he is the Population Dynamics Branch Chief at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center.

Mr. Rauch is Deputy Assistant Administrator for regulatory programs of NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service. After receiving a B.A. from the University of Virginia, he received a M.S. from the University of Georgia with the goal of becoming a forest ecologist scientist. He then earned a J.D. from Northwestern School of Law of Lewis and Clark College and worked for the U.S. Attorney’s Office on the spotted owl litigation team. He was transferred to NMFS where he first worked on salmon cases before becoming Assistant Section Chief where he oversaw all NMFS litigations.

Dr. Samuel G. Pooley earned his PhD in Political Science from the University of Hawaii with a dissertation on macroeconomic decision-making, and a Masters in Economics from the University of Birmingham in England. He began working in 1981 at what was then the Southwest Fisheries Science Center‟s Honolulu Laboratory (HL), later the Pacific Island Fisheries Science Center. During his career with NMFS, he served in many roles including acting Regional Administrator, acting chief scientists, and finally Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center Director for 10 years. Dr.

Dr. Sheila Stiles was born in Memphis, Tennessee. As a young child she developed a love for nature which led to her focusing on science in college. She majored in biology at Xavier University, New Orleans. After graduation, she had the opportunity to work at the Milford Laboratory for the summer and was asked to stay on at the end of the summer. She was the first full time African American woman to be hired at the Lab. She credits her many mentors and her love of biology as the reason for her long, successful career. Dr.

Dr. Steve Turner was born on May 23, 1949 in Providence, Rhode Island. He began working in 1974 at what was then the Mid Atlantic Fisheries Science Center at the Sandy Hook lab which was merged into the Northeast Fisheries Science Center. He received his PhD from Rutgers University in 1986. He moved to the Southeast Fisheries Science Center from 1984, and is currently the Fisheries Statistics Division Chief at the Southeast Fisheries Science Center in Miami.

Dr. Susan Abbott-Jamieson is a retired anthropologist with the Social Sciences Branch of NOAA, where she worked as the Senior Social Scientist in the Office of Science and Technology in the National Marine Fisheries Service. She joined the Air Force after high school, and later received a B.A. from Idaho State University and a Master’s and PhD. in Anthropology from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Thea Johanos has been a research wildlife biologist with the Hawaiian Monk Seal Research Program at the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (and its precursor, the Honolulu Lab) since 1982. She grew up in both Texas and Pennsylvania, and did her undergraduate and graduate work at Penn State University. After graduate school, she applied for work in Hawaii, as her family had just moved there. Her first job in Hawaii was with the US Forest Service working with Hawaiian honeycreepers and other forest birds.