David Armstrong
Director/Professor, School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, University of Washington
Bio
Dr. Armstrong’s research and graduate student program has been focused on crab and other shellfish life history and ecology from the Bering Sea through central California. As a new faculty in the School of Fisheries in 1979 he developed a number of programs that are still active to characterize the juvenile nursery role of estuaries in production of adults targeted in coastal fisheries. Along the way, many applied questions regarding anthropogenic impacts on estuarine resources and habitats have been addressed in research, especially ongoing perturbations caused by dredging, application of pesticides to enhance oyster culture, and effects of exotic species on native communities. His work has led to several major mitigation programs based in systems ecology and interplay between crab and bivalve habitat, and elucidation of the importance of expansive intertidal areas in support of high crab biomass. In the Bering Sea he and colleagues have studied larval ecology of snow and king crabs relative to spatial distribution of spawning stocks, physical forcing, shifts in predator populations and long-term trends reflected in major regime shifts. This work continues among a team composed of biologists and physical oceanographers to determine casual relationships between abiotic and biotic interactions that affect year class strength and future fisheries. Since 1998 David has been Director of the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington.
David A. Armstrong received his BS at UC Irvine 1970, his MS at Oregon State University in 1974, and his PhD at UC Davis 1978.