After graduating form Humboldt in 1995, I worked as a teaching and research assistant at Humboldt until moving to Seattle in 1996 to attend graduate school at University of Washington . I received a full scholarship to attend the School Aquatic and Fisheries Science ( http://www.fish.washington.edu/ ) from the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Oceans (http://tao.atmos.washington.edu/main.html ), and focused my thesis work on the effects of climate variability on marine survival of coho salmon in Puget Sound . This work was done in collaboration with the Washington Department of Fish and Game to improve their coho run-size forecast model by incorporating the effects of variability in ocean temperature and freshwater input on tidal mixing in the Puget Sound estuary. I received my Master of Science degree in Fisheries Science in March of 1999.

In 1998, I accepted a Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics (GLOBEC) funded PhD scholarship at Oregon State University to study the effects of climate variability on early life growth of sablefish. This retrospective study used otoliths archived at various aging laboratories in Washington, Oregon, British Columbia , and Alaska , as well as otoliths from juveniles collected at sea to determine size at age-1 at the population scale. In late 2001, I took a position with the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Arcata , California conducting radio telemetry studies on green sturgeon, coordinating juvenile salmon out-migrant monitoring on the Trinity River , and conducting an eelgrass/mudflat/oyster culture fish community analysis in Humboldt Bay .