Ben Grassman (MS student)
Ben has had a lifelong passion for the natural world and is particularly interested in the ecology, management, and conservation of anadromous fishes. In his free time, his favorite activities include surfing, whitewater paddling, fishing, hunting, and snowboarding. He especially enjoys spending time in the backcountry and loves packraft based expeditions. He completed an undergraduate degree at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and began his career with the Forest Service in central Idaho where he spent four field seasons working on a variety of fisheries projects. After that, he worked for the Morro Bay National Estuary Program and was most recently employed by Glacier National Park before starting graduate school in January of 2025. In partnership with a collaborative group effort, his thesis research uses radio telemetry and accelerometry to assess factors affecting Chinook salmon migration into more than 400 miles of potential habitat made available by dam removals on the Klamath River.
Laura Redfield (MS student)
Laura Redfield has spent her career studying fish, with a dedicated focus on anadromous species and conservation genetics. She started her journey at the Idaho Department of Fish and Game working with ESA-listed Snake River sockeye salmon. She then segued into fisheries genetics at the IDFG Fish Genetics Lab, where she worked on genetic projects analyzing the population structure and migration patterns of salmonids. Since then, Laura has balanced field and lab roles primarily for the State of Utah, conducting electrofishing surveys, spawning native trout, assessing aquatic habitats, and monitoring water quality.
Laura began her graduate program in Spring 2025 and plans to defend her master’s thesis in Spring 2027. Her thesis evaluates environmental DNA (eDNA) as a monitoring tool for anadromous fishes through direct comparison with conventional methods. Specifically, she is comparing species detections from eDNA sampling with tangle-net captures, and evaluating eDNA relative to sonar by assessing how well it reflects upstream migration timing. She will also test how flow-corrected eDNA concentrations, combined with relevant environmental variables, relate to sonar-based estimates of fish passage and abundance. Overall, this research provides a field-based evaluation of eDNA to inform study design in fish monitoring, highlighting its potential to reduce logistical demands and reliance on capture-based sampling.
Kendall Archie (MS student)
Kendall Archie is an M.S. candidate in Environmental Science & Management at Cal Poly Humboldt, with a plan to defend his thesis in Spring 2027. Before beginning graduate school, Kendall served as lab manager for the Ruhi Lab at UC Berkeley, where he supported freshwater ecology research focused on aquatic communities, food webs, and ecosystem responses to changing environmental conditions. He also helped lead long-term stream monitoring efforts at Pinnacles National Park, studying how aquatic invertebrate communities respond to changing patterns of stream flow.
Will Bebee (MS student)
Will grew up in Joplin, Missouri, where he developed an early appreciation for aquatic systems while exploring ponds, streams, and lakes throughout the Ozarks and Oklahoma. To pursue his curiosity about science and the natural world, he earned his B.A. in Biology with a concentration in Environmental Studies from Grinnell College in Iowa. After graduating, he worked as a fisheries technician with the Tin Mountain Conservation Center in New Hampshire, Idaho Fish and Game (Clearwater Region), and the U.S. Forest Service McKenzie River Ranger District in Oregon. Much of this work focused on salmonids, habitat restoration, and population monitoring, which deepened his passion for and understanding of lotic freshwater habitat processes. He’s currently a Master’s candidate at Cal Poly Humboldt, where he’s grateful for the opportunity to dive deeper into the quantitative and mapping side of fish habitat science under the guidance of advisor Nick Som. His current research focuses on developing a habitat cover model for juvenile salmon in the Klamath River.
Garrett Gimbel (Research Associate)
Garrett received his bachelor’s degree in Wildlife and Fisheries Biology from the University of Vermont in 2019 where he first began exploring the role of spatial ecology in wildlife management and conservation. He then spent 3 years working with the endangered New Mexico Meadow Jumping Mouse (Zapus luteus) in southern Colorado and New Mexico, evaluating the species’ habitat selection hibernation physiology. He then attended Cal Poly SLO where he continued building his Spatial Ecology toolbox with the imperiled narrow-faced kangaroo rat (Dipodomys venustus).
Now Garrett manages the Northern Sentinel Sites for Nature network – a biodiversity monitoring collaborative between CDFW and the California State Universities led by Cal Poly Humboldt. These biodiversity monitoring sites are dispersed across California and aim to be long term, standardized monitoring protocols for small mammals, large mammals, birds, bats, and herps. Garrett is co-supervised with Dr. Micaela Gunther from Cal Poly Humboldt.
CACFWRU Admin
We are in the process of hiring a new Administrative Assistant for the CACFWRU
Former lab members
Dr. Eve Robinson (https://doi.org/10.1002/nafm.10456, https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.13183, https://doi.org/10.1002/rra.3877).
Dr. Robinson is a former post-doc from the Som Lab, and is now a professor at the University of Calgary. (https://everobinson.wordpress.com/about/)
Dr. Chris Manhard (https://doi.org/10.1139/cjfas-2016-0506)
Dr. Manhard is a former post-doc from the Som Lab, and is now a data analyst with AKRF, Inc. in Hanover, MD.
Dr. Margarete Walden (https://doi.org/10.1093/najfmt/vqag005)
Dr. Walden is a former post-doc from the Som Lab, and is now a Killer Whale and salmonid biometrician/fish biologist for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
som-ecostat 