I grew up on a farm and was always interested in what was in the water in the ponds, rivers and swampy areas. I also loved going to the coast and learning more about what lived in the ocean. I liked being outdoors and doing field work and focused on science in high school – biology, chemistry and physics. But it was biology that really caught my interest. I took biology and ecology courses in college and ended up majoring in fisheries biology in graduate school, which meant learning about the abundance of fish populations and their behavior, learning the age of a fish and how fast it grows, their habitats, and how to track fish.