As the new director of Oregon Sea Grant, Stephen Brandt has eagerly accepted a daunting task: helping the US Pacific coastal regions address fisheries declines and prepare for climate change. It's his latest interaction with Sea Grant, the coastal science programme of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Organization (NOAA), which has been a staple of his career since he was conducting graduate research. See CV

California Sea Grant director Russ Moll says that Brandt's background will boost ecosystem-based management efforts. “Stephen is one of those rare folks with the skills to look at the big picture in oceans — which we need as we struggle with ecosystem-wide concerns such as ocean acidification,” says Moll.

Brandt started his science career with a mathematics degree at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. But the outdoorsman decided to get a second degree in zoology, and spent weekends conducting field work on Wisconsin's freshwater lakes. That led to a graduate project applying sonar to study fish dynamics, then a PhD using underwater acoustics to see how temperature affects habitat preference in Great Lakes fish. But instead of accepting a tenure-track position there, he joined the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Marine Laboratories in Australia. “I sought adventure when, at 28, I took the Australia position — and I got a full-blooded marine experience,” he says.

At the CSIRO, he refined acoustic approaches to investigate how Australia's vast, warm eddies might serve as nursery grounds for fish in the open sea. After four years, Brandt returned to the United States to study the Great Lakes' evolving salmon fishery with Sea Grant's programme at the State University of New York in Syracuse. Later, he studied the largest US estuary at the University of Maryland's Chesapeake Biological Laboratory.

When Sea Grant's Great Lakes Center for Environmental Research and Education was created in 1994, Brandt jumped at the chance to direct it. Four years later, he was overseeing the NOAA's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he created a single 'science' branch to strengthen the cross-disciplinary work that bolsters their now-leading role in ecosystem forecasting. Moll says that Brandt's past success with region-wide projects will help the west coast to tackle the effects of climate change, including organism range shifts and increased storminess.