As Director of the NOAA Fisheries National Systematics Laboratory, I am one of the many scientists from "affiliated agencies" assigned to the National Museum of Natural History. We are here to use the National Collections, libraries and other museum resources for our research, primarily in systematics, and to serve as agency experts on particular groups of organisms. We also provide curatorial support for the NMNH collections for the groups of organisms on which we work.

As an adjunct faculty member, I teach graduate courses at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, the School of Marine Science for the College of William and Mary.

My current research activities can be summarized in the following two categories: the natural history of cephalopods and marine biodiversity. The research into cephalopod natural history includes (1) characterizing the fauna in US waters, as well as in deep-sea and polar regions, (2) determining evolutionary relationships among the neocoleoids (living squids, cuttlefishes, octopods, and their relatives), and (3) working out the details of their early life histories. My work on biodiversity has focussed on the interrelationships among systematics, fisheries agencies, and marine biodiversity. I am also participating in several projects exploring marine biodiversity under a broad effort known as the Census of Marine Life. I have pursued much of the research described above through a network of collaboration, including other members of my lab and agency, Smithsonian scientists, university faculty, and a variety of students and post-docs. I spend a lot of time at sea either leading or participating in deep-sea and polar expeditions on US and foreign ships using both submersibles and traditional net sampling to study deep-sea animals.

Squids, octopods, etc. include species that are targets of substantial fisheries, important components of marine food webs, and key experimental subjects. Correct identification of these animals is necessary for their management as fishery resources and for understanding their roll in the structure and function of marine ecosystems. Furthermore, any aspect of comparative biology (e.g., physiology of the giant neurons) requires understanding of evolutionary relationships of the organisms under consideration. Evolution of cephalopods is particularly interesting because of their many characteristics, including early life history, that seem more similar to fishes than to their molluscan relatives.

Our knowledge of marine biological diversity is much less than that of terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems. This is especially true for deep-sea and polar regions, even though these regions comprise over 95% of the biosphere. Fisheries agencies are uniquely situated to contribute to advancement of knowledge about marine biodiversity because of mandatory broad-scale and long-term sampling required for marine resource management. The agency also develops management plans based on understanding of marine ecosystems, for which biodiversity is a fundamentally important aspect.