Photo of
Hal Geiger courtesy of Kent Crabtree
Curriculum vitae
Harold
J. Geiger
EMPLOYMENT
October
2007 – present: Co-owner and chief scientist for the St.
Hubert Research Group, a small business in Southeast Alaska
offering assistance with scientific writing; assistance
with the planning and analysis of scientific sampling
studies; assistance with problems in statistics, fisheries,
and environmental science; and on-site training in
scientific writing and statistical sampling.
July
2001 – July 2007: Salmon stock assessment research
supervisor for the Southeast Region of the Alaska
Department of Fish and Game, Commercial Fisheries Division.
I directly supervised a core staff of four project-leader
biologists, one biometrician, and one special-projects
biologist. The total staff included over 40 technicians,
specialists, and biologists, including part-time staff. I
managed, directly or through subordinates, a research
budget of approximately one and a half to two million
dollars per year. My group assessed the status of exploited
Pacific salmon populations in Southeast Alaska.
May 1997
– July 2001: Chief biometrician with the Alaska Department
of Fish and Game, Commercial Fisheries Division. I led the
Salmon Stock Assessment Section of the Chief Fisheries
Scientists Office. This section contained biologists,
computer programmers, and other specialists working on
various salmon projects, and included coded-wire tag and
otolith mark processing laboratories, geographical
information system projects, and projects with riverine
sonar. I was a technical advisor to the United States
section of the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission, an
international treaty commission. I was the principal editor
of the annual salmon forecast. Annually, I conducted
several independent research projects and participated in
the Alaskan Board of Fisheries process. From 1997 to 2001,
my main research area was the use of riverine sonar in
salmon stock assessment.
March
1988 – May 1997: Statewide salmon biometrician with the
Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Commercial Fisheries
Division. Supervised by Dr. Douglas Eggers. I provided
technical oversight of statewide research and management
efforts. In 1990 I initiated the Alaskan Salmon Workshop
series—an informal series of scientific meetings for salmon
managers and researchers. I managed several stock
separation or other research projects each year and
prepared technical presentations for the Alaska Board of
Fisheries on stock separation, forecasting, and the
management of hatchery harvest. I was the principal editor
of the annual salmon forecast; an Alaska Department of Fish
and Game advanced scientific SCUBA diver; deputized Fish
and Game peace officer; statistical consultant to Alaska
Department of Fish and Game Exxon
Valdez oil
spill investigators; a technical advisor to the U.S.
Section of the International North Pacific Fisheries
Commission, prior to the commission disbanding; advisor to
its successor organization, the North Pacific Anadromous
Fish Commission.
Dec. 1982 – March 1988: Biometrician with the Alaska Dept.
of Fish and Game, FRED Division. Supervised by Dr. J.S.
Holland. I was responsible for statistical and data
processing consulting with biologists and private
aquaculture organizations. Supervised small research and
data processing group. I oversaw the introduction of
microcomputers to hatcheries, project biologists, and FRED
management.
Sept.
1980 – Dec. 1982: Mathematical statistician with the
Statistical Reporting Service of the U.S. Dept. of
Agriculture, Madison Wisconsin. I designed, implemented,
managed, and summarized a wide range of surveys to estimate
agricultural production in the state of Wisconsin.
Sept. 1978 – June 1980: Teaching assistant, Department of
Statistics, and research assistant, Department of
Agricultural and Resource Economics, Oregon State
University.
EDUCATION
Ph.D. (fisheries), University of Alaska Fairbanks.
M.S.
(statistics), Oregon State University.
B.S.
(mathematics), Oregon State University.
OTHER
Received the American Fisheries Society's Stevan R. Phelps
Award for best genetics paper in an American Fisheries
Society Journal in 2007: Geiger, H.J., I. Wang, P. Malecha,
K. Hebert, W. W. Smoker, and A.J. Gharrett. 2007. What
causes variability in pink salmon family size? Transactions
of the American Fisheries Society 136(6): 1688-1698.
Affiliate faculty, University of Alaska Fairbanks, School
of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences.
The 2005 President of the Alaska Chapter of the American
Fisheries Society. The chapter is an association of over
400 fishery managers, government scientists, academic
researchers, and others with an interest in fisheries and
fishery science in Alaska.
Co-convenor of a symposium on Bayesian statistics in
fisheries at the 2005 American Fisheries Society national
meeting in Anchorage, Alaska.
Invited speaker at a workshop on pink salmon forecasting,
sponsored by the Exxon
Valdez Trustee
Counsel. The workshop was held March 16 and 17, 2004, in
Cordova, Alaska.
Vice-chair of the board of directors of Juneau Jazz and
Classics—a nonprofit organization that brings music to
Southeast Alaska. We hold an annual music festival and
promote music education. Joined the Board at the end of
2003.
Member of the organizing committee of the Joint Meeting of
IBSFC, ICES, NASCO, NPAFC, and PICES on Causes of Marine
Mortality of Salmon in the North Pacific and North Atlantic
Oceans and in the Baltic Sea. A joint meeting of several
international fisheries commissions—held March 14–15, 2002,
Vancouver, B.C., Canada.
Member of the organizing committee of the Pacific Rim Wild
Salmon and Steelhead Conference, held November 5–6, 2001,
at the World Trade Center in Portland, Oregon. Brought
together experts in salmon science, management, and
conservation from Canada, Russia, Japan, and the United
States to determine what basic actions are necessary to
halt the decline of wild salmon populations across the
North Pacific. Meeting was organized by the Wild Salmon
Center.
Convenor of the 1997 Alaska Riverine Sonar Workshop—an
international symposium on the use of river-based sonar.
Co-convenor (together with Dr. Peter Dahl, of the
University of Washington) of the 1999 Riverine Sonar
Workshop held at the University of Washington.
Awarded Chapter Service Recognition Award in 1996 by the
national Council of Chapters of the American Statistical
Association, “...in recognition of service to the Alaska
Chapter.”
Invited member of a panel of experts, assembled at the
Olympic National Park by the National Park Service on May
8, 1996, to review the status of Lake Ozette sockeye salmon
and make recommendations for its preservation.
Invited
speaker, The International Symposium on Biological
Interactions of Enhanced and Wild Salmonids. June 17–20,
1991. Nanaimo, British Columbia.
Reviewer
for a number of scientific publications including the
Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences,
Transactions of the American Fisheries Society, The North
American Journal of Fisheries Management, Fisheries
Research, Fishery Bulletin, Lowell Wakefield Symposium
series and Alaska Sea Grant, the International Symposium
and Workshop on Creel and Angler Surveys in Fisheries and
Management, and others.
Co-host from 1983 to 1997 of "Jazz Beat"—a weekly radio
show on KTOO FM.
Board of
directors, Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Juneau, November
1988–March 1990.
Two-term
president of the Alaskan Chapter of the American
Statistical Association, 1986 and 1993.
Received the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, FRED
Division’s 1987 Award for Technical Achievement.
Adjunct
instructor, University of Alaska at Juneau (now UAS)
1984–1987. Taught introductory mathematics, graduate-level
course in nonparametric statistics, and served as guest
lecturer in various fisheries classes.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Geiger, H.J., I. Wang, P. Malecha, K. Hebert, W. W. Smoker,
and A.J. Gharrett. 2007. What causes variability in pink
salmon family size? Transactions of the American Fisheries
Society 136(6): 1688-1698.
Geiger, H.J. and X. Zhang. 2002. A simple procedure to
evaluate salmon escapement trends that emphasizes
biological meaning over statistical significance. Alaska
Fisheries Research Bulletin 9(2):128–134.
Geiger, H.J., T. Perry, M. Fukuwaka, and V. Radchenko.
2002. Status of salmon stocks and fisheries in the North
Pacific Ocean. In
The
Proceedings of the Joint Meeting on Causes of Marine
Mortality of Salmon in the North Pacific and North Atlantic
Oceans and in the Baltic Sea. North Pacific Anadromous Fish
Commission Technical Report Number 4. Vancouver, B.C.
Quang, P.X. and H.J. Geiger. 2002. A statistical approach
to estimating fish passage using a form of echo
integration. Alaska Fisheries Research Bulletin 9(1)9–15.
Quang, P.X. and H.J. Geiger. 2002. A review of the net
selectivity problem and a model for apportioning species
based on size-selective sampling. Alaska Fisheries Research
Bulletin 9(1)16–26.
Geiger, H.J., W.W. Smoker, L.A. Zhivitovsky, and A.J.
Gharrett. 1997. Variability of family size in pink salmon
has implications for conservation biology and human use.
The Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences Vol.
54(11): 2684–2690
Geiger, H.J., and A.J. Gharrett. 1997.
Salmon
stocks at risk: what’s the stock and what’s the risk. An
Issues and Perspectives Paper. Alaska Fisheries Research
Bulletin 4(2):178–180.
Geiger, H.J., B. G. Bue, S. Sharr, A.C. Wertheimer, and
T.M. Willette. 1996.
A life
history approach to estimating damage to Prince William
Sound pink salmon from the Exxon
Valdez oil
spill. pp. 487–489. In
S.D.
Rice, R.B. Spies, D.A. Wolfe, and B.A. Wright,
[eds.],
Proceedings of the 1993 Exxon
Valdez Oil
Spill Symposium. American Fisheries Society Symposium 18.
Geiger, H.J 1994. A Bayesian approach for estimating
hatchery contribution in a series of salmon fisheries.
Alaska Fisheries Research Bulletin. Vol 1 No. 1: 66–75.
Meyers, T.R., S. Short, C. Farrington, K. Lipson, H.J.
Geiger, R. Gates. 1993. Comparison of the enzyme-linked
immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and fluorescent antibody test
(FAT) for measuring the prevalence and levels of
Renibacterium
salmoninarum in wild
and hatchery stocks of salmonid fishes in Alaska, USA.
Diseases of Aquatic Organisms. Vol. 16:181–189.
Meyers,
T.R., S. Short, C. Farrington, K. Lipson, H.J. Geiger, R.
Gates. 1993. Establishment of a negative-positive threshold
optical density value for the enzyme-linked immunosorbent
assay (ELISA) to detect soluble antigen of
Renibacterium
salmoninarum in
Alaskan Pacific salmon. Diseases of Aquatic Organisms. Vol.
16:191–197.
Koenings,
J.P., H.J. Geiger, and J.J. Hasbrouck.
1993.
Smolt-to-adult
survival patterns of sockeye salmon: effects of smolt
length and geographic latitude when entering the sea. The
Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.
50:600–611.
