Robert Kope was born in Reedley, California in 1953. He received his PhD in Population Ecology from the University of California Davis and began working for NOAA Fisheries at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in1989.His work has focused on stock assessments, harvest management, and conservation biology of salmon in northern California. In 1994, Robert moved to the Northwest Fisheries Science Center to participate in the coast-wide status review of all Pacific salmon species under the Endangered Species Act.

Robert Santangelo is a fishery market reporter for the National Marine Fisheries Service. He received his B.S. in Business from C.W. Post College in 1976. His father and uncle worked at Fulton Fish Market from the late 1940's to the early 1960's which meant that Santangelo was around the fishing industry from a young age. His first job for NMFS was as a clerk in 1979. Shortly after being hired, he also started working as a market reporter for Market News at Fulton Fish Market. He reported on the market at Fulton from 1979 until 2005 when the market was moved to the Bronx.

Robin Waples was born in Berkeley, California. He received a Bachelor’s degree in American studies from Yale University and his Ph.D. in marine biology from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In 1986, Waples joined the Northwest Fisheries Science Center as a National Research Council Research Associate. From 1997 to 2000 he was the Director of the Conservation Biology Division. In 2001, he became the center's Senior Scientist. His research interests include population genetics of anadromous and marine fishes.

Roger Griffis is a climate change coordinator for NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service. He has a B.S. in Biology from Carleton College and a Master’s in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from UC Irvine. Griffis grew up in Minnesota with a fascination for lakes and streams, and was particularly inspired by the complexity of ecosystems. Wanting to play a role in protecting the environment, he was led to conservation work through the Knauss Sea Grant Fellowship in Washington D.C in 1994.

Dr. Rohinee Paranjpye was born in Pune, India in 1955 and has been working at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center as a microbiologist since 1979. As part of a microbiology product quality and safety team, she helped improve the safety and marketability of fishery products by identifying hazards in seafood. She also researches the role of abiotic and biotic environmental factors on the presence of marine pathogens in order to develop improved risk assessment tools for early warning systems. Rohinee has a B.S. in Chemistry from India, a B.S.

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.