Fisheries Graduate Program
Alaskans rely on sound science to inform the sustainable harvest of fish and shellfish and manage habitat use, and to advance understanding of Alaska’s unique aquatic ecosystems and fishery-dependent communities. Our fisheries faculty help educate the scientists who work in Alaska's fishing industry and conservation agencies, and lead novel research to benefit Alaska’s fisheries and fishing communities.
Fisheries students enjoy a low student-to-faculty ratio and have direct opportunities to engage with Alaska’s many fish and shellfish species, fishing fleets, and fishing cultures and communities. Most of our graduate students have financial support from fellowships, research grants, and internships awarded by governmental and tribal agencies as well as businesses and nongovernmental organizations in the private sector. While most graduates stay in Alaska and work for those agencies and organizations, many go on to take positions in academia or with agencies, businesses, NGOs, or Tribes or Tribal organizations outside Alaska.
Faculty supervise student research on a broad array of biological issues in laboratories specializing in quantitative fisheries and stock assessment methods, biology and ecology of marine and freshwater species, molecular genetics, behavioral ecology, marine policy, Indigenous fisheries, social and cultural dimensions, and more. University facilities are located across Alaska in Juneau, Seward, Kodiak, Anchorage, and Fairbanks. Our students also work in laboratories and facilities of public and private agencies such as the NOAA Fisheries Auke Bay Laboratory, USGS Glacier Bay Field Station, Alaska Department of Fish and Game Mark, Tag and Age Laboratory, and the Salmon Broodstock Lab at the Douglas Island Pink and Chum Macaulay Hatchery.
Our students’ theses and dissertations have addressed issues of fisheries science in the Arctic; the interior Yukon, Kuskokwim and Copper rivers; the Bering Sea, Prince William Sound, and the Gulf of Alaska; and the Inside Passage of Southeast Alaska. Their subjects have ranged from the effects of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill to the evolution of salmon or rockfish, to the submarine movements of deep-sea crabs, to traditional Iñupiaq whaling and cultural well-being. Our students learn techniques such as wintertime scuba diving, DNA fingerprinting, bioeconomics, ethnographic field research, and classical methods of fisheries science—boats, ships, nets and hip boots. Modern quantitative techniques (statistical analysis, sampling, stock assessment and GIS) are a part of every student’s program and are the particular focus of many.
Advisors
Admissions
To be accepted into a graduate degree program in the Department of Fisheries, applicants must have an eligible faculty member willing to serve as a major advisor. Successful applicants generally contact individual faculty members in their area of interest before submitting a formal application. Faculty welcome such inquiries, since new graduate students are an essential component of our research programs. See research areas of our current faculty listed above.
Students are typically only accepted once they have identified a funding source and project. Most fisheries students are supported by graduate research assistantships associated with research grants secured by faculty members. Some research projects may require graduate assistants with backgrounds and strengths relevant to those projects. Consideration for such assistantships may entail additional or more stringent criteria.
Learn more about admission requirements.