SFOS Newsletter
Spring 2007
Featured Student: Jodi Pirtle, Ph.D. Fisheries
by Torie Baker, Marine Advisory Program Agent
Jodi Pirtle has all things fish in her blood. As a child, she fished salmon openers on her family's gillnetting boat out of her hometown of Cordova and waded around Prince William Sound's tide pools with her grandfather, a state fisheries biologist. Jodi is now pursuing her Ph.D. in fisheries at the UAF School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences program in Juneau.
When Bill Smoker, director of the SFOS Fisheries Division, notified me that Jodi had been awarded two prestigious national awards to support her research on groundish habitat in Southeast Alaska, I caught up with Jodi to get an update on her life since leaving Cordova. Below is a transcript of my interview with Jodi.
Where have you been since graduating from Cordova High School?
I studied marine biology at Western Washington State and received a master's degree in environmental science at Washington State University. At WSU, I had the opportunity to participate in exciting fisheries habitat mapping research off the West Coast using submersibles and ROVs to directly observe marine communities, specifically groundfish, associated with seamounts.
What did you study for your master's degree at WSU?
My master's research at WSU focused on a seamount 15 km off of northern California called Cordell Bank. This seamount is a special place because of its location in an ocean current flowing from the north. This creates upwelling and circulating water above the bank resulting in abundant marine life-- seabirds, turtles, whales, dense schools of rockfish, and carpets of colorful invertebrates at the crests of the ridge tops which are at a depth of 90 meters.
What are you studying for your doctoral degree at UAF?
I have shifted my focus from seamounts to nearshore subtidal communities near Juneau and Sitka, with a special interest inthe importance of sponges, corals, sea pens and anemones as habitats for harvested species like rockfish and red king crab. These nearshore locations are shallow and accessible by SCUBA diving. Although I love the submersible work, I am able to conduct manipulative experiments using SCUBA gear to test why habitat is important to fish. You can't really do that on a seamount with a submersible (yet).
What questions are you trying to answer with this research?
We can try to tackle key questions about the importance of habitat in these shallow water communities that will apply broadly to fisheries policy, such as information on habitat preferences, and differences in habitat use among life stages. This information, for example, will narrow our definition of what constitutes Essential Fish Habitat (a federal fisheries management term), a concept at present too broadly defined to effectively protect habitats and manage adverse human impacts.
Who do you see benefiting from your work?
This type of research is of benefit to fisheries managers and policy makers because it provides knowledge of where harvested species are living and what habitats they prefer. I am working on publishing this manuscript.
What personally draws you to the study of oceans?
I am curious and intrigued by ocean beings, fish and the like – they live where we cannot and have mastered a whole set of adaptations to creatively exist in the marine world – colors, shapes and life strategies.
What's ahead for you?
I hope to finish my Ph.D. in three or four years. I enjoy teaching and research, so a university position would be fun. I could also see myself working in state and federal management research or marine fisheries policy; my M.S. in environmental science prepared me for this kind of work. There are many directions I could go; I'll see what happens.
Jodi Pirtle received two prestigious scholarship awards in 2006. She was awarded the American Academy of Underwater Sciences (AAUS) Scholarship, which recognizes one master's and one doctoral student annually for excellent academic and research work using diving as a principal research tool. Jodi also received a scholarship from the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) Aquatic World Awareness, Responsibility and Education (AWARE) program. Jodi's advisors are Ginny Eckert and Jennifer Reynolds.