Fritzsche Named To Global Conservation Panel

HSU professor to assess threats to marine species

Humboldt Sentinel
11/24/08
By Sentinel Staff

ARCATA -- A Humboldt State University fisheries professor is one of 18 scientists invited to an international conference in London in January to evaluate threats to endangered marine fish species.

Dr. Ronald A. Fritzsche, a professor of fisheries biology emeritus, is the only person from the U.S. west coast attending the conference.

A 1967 HSU grad and professor there since 1988, the former Department of Fisheries chair will attend the Sampled Red List Index Marine Fish Workshop.

The workshop will evaluate threats to about 350 species of marine fish, using data compiled for some 20,000 marine species to determine the risk of extinction.

The worshop is jointly organized by the Zoological Society of London and the Global Marine Species Assessment, headquartered at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va.

Dr. Fritzsche is a world authority on pipefish, seahorses, cornet fish and trumpet fish, among others. He has worked for more than three decades with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization to develop fish identification guides for fishery workers around the world.

He earned his Ph.D. in 1976 from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and was named Humboldt State’s Outstanding Professor for 1990-91.