William Ricker

Zoology, Animals, Physiology, Metabolism

Canada's Greatest Fisheries Biologist: Inventor of the Ricker Curve for describing fish population dynamics

"Try and arrange that you’re doing something that you’re interested in. There’s quite a bit of routine in research work but I’ve never worked on a project that I wasn’t very interested in."

So You Want to Be a Fisheries Biologist

Ricker felt that anyone planning a career in science should be sure to choose a subject that is of great personal interest. Some aspects of scientific work can be boring, consisting of very repetitive experiments or endless data collection. Only a keen interest in the subject will make the tedium of the day-to-day work tolerable.

Explore Further

David R. Montgomery, King of Fish: The Thousand-Year Run of Salmon, Westview Press, 2003.

William Ricker, Computation and Interpretation of Biological Statistics of Fish Populations, Bulletin of the Fisheries Research Board of Canada no. 191, 1975. (This is “the Green Book.”)

Website of the Pacific Fishery Management Council.

Cyber Salmon website by Alaska Region of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the Fairbanks Fish & Wildlife Field Office.

Salmon lifecycle on the GoldSeal website.

Other scientists who may be of interest:

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