Steven G. Smith, Ph.D.
Associate Research Scientist
University of Miami Rosenstiel School of
Marine and Atmospheric Science
Division of Marine Biology and Fisheries
sgsmith@rsmas.miami.edu

I am an Associate Research Scientist at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. I will serve as the lead investigator of the fish census project for this mission, and will be participating as a SCUBA Nitrox surface diver. This project is a component of a large-scale research program designed to assess the biological status of Florida Keys reef fish stocks subjected to fishing and other environmental changes. For the past several years this program, led by my close colleagues Dr. Jim Bohnsack of the National Marine Fisheries Service and Dr. Jerry Ault of the University of Miami, has been conducting fishery-independent diver visual surveys to understand how marine protected areas in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary contribute to fishery production throughout the entire Florida Keys ecosystem. The data collected during this Aquarius mission will be instrumental for improving the accuracy and precision of these fishery-independent population estimates and status assessments of reef fishes.

My interest in marine science began as a child on numerous fishing and boating trips with my family to the Channel Islands in the coastal waters of southern California. When I was sixteen I learned to SCUBA dive, marking the beginning of my exploration of the world underneath the waves. I continued this exploration after high school, earning a B.A. in Biology at Occidental College with an emphasis in Marine Biology. Some of my favorite undergraduate classes were Ichthyology, Biological Oceanography, and Fisheries Science. My marine science education at Occidental went well beyond the classroom, however. I was fortunate to work as a part-time field and laboratory technician for the College's marine science research group, participating in a wide variety of research activities ranging from sorting zooplankton in the lab to conducting diver visual fish surveys in the field. I also spent many days at sea aboard the College's oceanographic research vessel, the R/V Vantuna, pulling plankton nets, sorting fish trawls, and teaching oceanographic research techniques to students from high schools and other colleges and universities in the Los Angeles area. After graduating, I worked for three years at a small marine laboratory run by Occidental College in Redondo Beach, California, first as a marine aquarist and then as a research associate. I was involved in a variety of live-animal research studies, including developing laboratory methods for spawning and larval rearing of marine fish species and conducting toxicological/disease bioassays on marine fishes and invertebrates.

I then moved across the country and enrolled in a graduate program in fisheries science at the University of Maryland's Chesapeake Biological Laboratory. I think the main draw for me to the specific field of fisheries science is that it involves both of the fundamental questions of philosophy posed by Aristotle-how does nature work, and where do we, as humans, fit in? -as they relate to the ocean environment. I believe that figuring out how to utilize marine animal populations for food, agricultural and industrial products, and recreation in a rational, sustainable manner can help us in the more general problem of how we as a species can live and thrive on this planet without irreparably altering the ecosystems essential for our survival. While at Maryland my academic and research training delved into mostly quantitative fields of study, including mathematics, statistics, fish population dynamics and stock assessment, computer programming, business and management science, and resource economics. After receiving my Ph.D., I was fortunate to join a fisheries research group at the University of Miami under the direction of Jerry Ault. Our research team is comprised of people like myself who have received intensive training in both the biological and quantitative aspects of marine science and oceanography. We are thus able to pursue research questions in marine resources from theoretical and empirical points of view simultaneously in an integrated manner.

In my other life away from fish, I happily spend time with my wife and three-year-old daughter exploring the natural and human realms of existence both locally in south Florida and across the four winds of the globe…that is, of course, when they can push me off the couch and pry the TV clicker from my grasp.