The number of NEFSC biologists and social scientists who can claim to have won a major conservation award now runs into the dozens after the American Fisheries Society presented the Center with the William E. Ricker Resource Conservation Award.

“I had the great privilege and honor to accept the award on behalf of the Resource Evaluation and Assessment Division in September,” said READ Chief Fred Serchuk. While he takes immense pride in the recognition bestowed on the division, Serchuk said he basks “in the shadow of the tremendous accomplishments and talents of the scientists themselves who truly earned this award.”

The American Fisheries Science bestows the Ricker Award to recognize outstanding accomplishment in resource conservation that is significant at the national or international level. The AFS honored NEFSC fisheries scientists and social scientists for their leadership in developing definitions of overfishing; establishing a vigorous peer review system; issuing repeated warnings the groundfish stocks were severely overfished; and providing the scientific basis for rebuilding overfished stocks.

The award plaque now hangs on the wall in Serchuk’s office, but first it spent a month on the mail table in Population Dynamics Branch, where it could be viewed by some of the NEFSC scientists most closely associated with Ricker’s fisheries work.

“It’s a significant award, given for sustained excellence,” said Paul Rago, chief of READ’s Population Dynamics Branch. “It is not a one-paper or one-individual award. It’s a tribute to the collective work of our operation over time.”

The award is named for William E. Ricker, a biologist who did groundbreaking work in stock assessment in the mid 20th century. In addition to developing methods of fishery stock assessment, Ricker did seminal work in entomology, published papers in ornithology, and taught himself Russian and translated scores of ichthyology papers – a feat that opened a new literature to English-speaking fishery biologists.

“He was a Renaissance guy,” Rago said. “For years people who read his fisheries papers and his entomology papers assumed they were written by two different people.”

Serchuk noted that READ is only the third organizational unit to win the Ricker award since it was established in 1995. 

“In my view, the award is all the more special for being a group award as it represents sustained outstanding efforts by all READ staff, past and present, in all three Branches: Population Dynamics; Social Sciences; and Protected Species,” he said.

The AFS is the world’s oldest and largest society for fisheries scientists and managers. The society promotes advances in fisheries and aquatic sciences and seeks to improve conservation of fishery resources. AFS President Chris Kohler presented the Ricker Award at the society’s 136th annual meeting in Lake Placid, New York.

Posted March 15, 2007