When Dan Pondella was 8 years old, he was enrolled in the gifted students program of the Los Angeles Unified School District. As part of that program, "one year, we did marine biology, and we cruised around every Friday on a boat somewhere doing different things," he says. "I liked being on the water. That's how I got started."

What he got started on was a career in fish research and marine ecology that's about to enter a new phase as he nears completion of his dissertation for a PhD in Organismic Biology. His research involves eight species of eastern Pacific basses, three of them found off the Southern California coast, two from Mexico, one from Ecuador, one from Chile, one in the Galapagos, and one in the western Atlantic. "I'm reconstructing their evolutionary tree," he explains. In addition he is "working on life history, trying to understand why fishes do what they do," his research will also be of interest to ecologists and to those involved in commercial fisheries.

Unlike some doctoral candidates, Dan already has a place to work when he acquires his PhD--the place he's worked since 1988, when he became a research associate in the Vantuna Research Group at Occidental College. Today, he's director of that group. Thus, for more than a decade, he's studied marine ecology on the Southern California coast, including fish life off Redondo Beach's King Harbor, the Palos Verdes peninsula, and Santa Catalina island. A major program involves white sea bass, the variety that ends up in supermarkets. "It's my job to cruise around Southern California in a large research boat to assess the hatchery [at Carlsbad] and see how the natural stocks are doing," he says.

Dan has also worked with the U.S. Navy on a project at the North Island Naval Station in San Diego and with the Chevron Products Company water-monitoring project at the El Segundo refinery.

He came to UCLA in 1995 in part because he wanted to switch his focus from ecology to evolutionary biology. Professor Don Buth, who became his adviser, "always impressed on me how important it was to publish papers, because in our field that's big." Having digested that message, Dan has a CV that lists nine published articles, along with another dozen in press or under review. His list of professional presentations runs three pages.

Professor Buth boasts that "Dan would be too modest to say that he received our department's highest award-the Otto H. Scherbaum Award for Outstanding Research in Biology. And, he is currently the president of the Southern California Academy of Sciences-making him the first person to hold this office while still in graduate school."

Asked to explain this sterling record, Dan says, "I just work hard, nothing special." But clearly, more than hard work is involved when someone writes a dissertation at the same time he "makes sure that I continue to write papers." Dan says, "The key for me is just staying organized, doing one project, finishing it, doing the next one. There's nothing really special about it," he repeats.

The writing itself is "lot of hard work, but it's not incredibly difficult. It just takes a lot of practice." Getting things published can be more complicated. Daniel recalls a co-authored article for the Bulletin of Marine Science that proved a challenge. Titled "Method for Estimating Marine Habitat Values Based on Fish Guilds," its successful publication was the result of a two-year review process. The article looked at environmental data to compare different fish habitats, Dan explains, using "a brand new technique" that caused the long delay because reviewers were unfamiliar with it.

Unlike most graduate students in the sciences, Dan has published much work on his own or with collaborators in institutions other than UCLA. "Don [Professor Buth] told me when he accepted me into his lab that he did not expect me to tag his name onto all of my publications," Dan says. However, they will soon publish some collaborative research.

While Dan was "cruising around collecting these fishes," he says, he was also collecting the parasites that live on them, usually in a way that "doesn't really cause the fish any problems." Professor Buth had become interested in those parasites, and together, the two are developing a new classification system for the organisms.

In another collaboration, Dan and two marine scientists in the California State University system recently signed a contract with the University of California Press to write The Ecology of Marine Fishes of California, which will be both textbook and scholarly publication.

"Publishing papers can be a pain in the ass," Dan acknowledges, but "I don't see any way around publishing as part of being a scientist. It enhances every aspect of my work, stimulating critical thinking and improving current and future work.

Published in Winter 2001, Graduate Quarterly