Meet the Scientists: B

Steve Barbeaux NOAA Alaska Fisheries Science Center email

Steve Barbeaux is a research fisheries biologist at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AFSC). At the AFSC Steve authors the Aleutian Islands walleye pollock stock assessment and co-authors the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska walleye pollock stock assessments. Steve’s current research focuses on the collection of fisheries data in collaboration with the fishing industry and the development of quantitative methodologies for working with non-systematic and opportunistic data collections. Steve is working on a PhD in fisheries at the School of Aquatic and Fisheries Sciences, University of Washington. He obtained a Master of Marine Affairs degree at the University of Washington in 2001 and Bachelor of Arts degree in Biology at New College of Florida in 1993.

Kelly Benoit-Bird Oregon State University email

I am an Assistant Professor of Biological Oceanography at the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University. I think that I first became interested in aquatic life as a child on the many fishing trips I took with my father in the waters near our New England home. I earned a BS in Aquatic Biology at Brown University and a PhD in Zoology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa before completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology.

My research focus is pelagic ecology with an emphasis on applying acoustical techniques to animals in the ocean ranging in size from zooplankton to sperm whales. A major concentration of my research is predator-prey interactions. For example, some recent projects have included Hawaiian spinner dolphins foraging on deep sea fish, sperm whales feeding on squid, and sardines feeding on copepods and krill. I consider myself a community ecologist seeking to determine how animals are distributed in three-dimensional space over time in the ocean, how they got that way, and what the consequences of those patterns are. These questions have important implications for understanding ecosystem processes, fisheries and their management, chemical and nutrient cycling in the ocean, endangered species, and mitigation of human activities.

Hongsheng Bi University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science email

Hongsheng Bi is an assistant professor of biological oceanography at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. He received his Ph.D on zooplankton population dynamics at Louisiana State University. He was a post-doctoral scholar and research assistant professor at Oregon State University before accepting a faculty position at University of Maryland. His research interests include zooplankton population dynamics, spatial explicit trophic interaction between zooplankton and larval fish, climate change and ecosystem response.

Bodil Bluhm University of Alaska Fairbanks email

Bodil Bluhm is a Research Assistant Professor for Marine Biology atthe School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Born and raised in northern Germany near Hamburg, Bodil began conducting Arctic studies during her MSc work at the University of Kiel, Germany (1996-1997) and Antarctic work during her PhD work at the University of Bremen and Alfred-Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany (1997-2000).

Her initial research focus on the population dynamics of polar benthic invertebrates has broadened since she moved to Alaska in 2001. This is when she also began exploring Arctic sea ice communities in joint projects with Rolf Gradinger and Katrin Iken.

In the last five years, Bodil’s research has taken her to Alaskan, Canadian and Russian Arctic waters to study seafloor and sea ice communities, biodiversity patterns and food webs, carbon flow and population dynamics from the coastal waters to the Arctic deep sea.

Bodil's involvement in BEST is through joint work with her colleagues Gradinger and Iken and University of Alaska graduate students on the role of sea ice algae for herbivorous plankton and benthos in the Bering Sea. This topic is important to explore, because we need to first know what the role of sea ice biota is before we can evaluate what the effects of sea ice shrinkage or loss are.

Nicholas Bond University of Washington email

My research during earlier stages of my career concerned mesoscale atmospheric phenomena in the coastal zone. I have always been interested in climate issues, and what began as essentially a professional hobby I have been able to parlay into my current major focus.

Here I recognize FOCI, which provided me the opportunity to begin working on a variety of projects pertaining to the marine ecosystems of Alaska. This research has greatly benefited from the collaborations with scientists at PMEL and AFSC.

I have had a long involvement with the GLOBEC project, both in terms as a source of funding, and as a member of its scientific steering committee. I look forward to working with other BSIERP/BEST scientists on how climate change is liable to impact the ecosystem of the Bering Sea.

Vernon Byrd US Fish and Wildlife Service email

I was born and raised in North Carolina. I received a BS in wildlife management from the University of Georgia in 1968, conducted graduate studies in ecology and statistics at the University of Alaska in 1975, and received an MS at the University of Idaho in Wildlife Biology in 1989. I became particularly interested in the ocean when I was stationed in the US Navy at Adak Island in the Aleutians 1968-1971. Since then, opportunities to conduct studies of marine birds and marine mammals have been afforded through positions as a biologist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service on National Wildlife Refuges in coastal Alaska and Hawaii.

My professional interest is in contributing to the understanding of marine ecosystem processes through long-term study of response of top-level predators to fluctuations in environmental conditions and resource management practices.