Page 20 - Norwood Spring 2019 Magazine

Taking a

Deep Dive

with Carl

St. John ’08

FOR THE LOVE OF FISH

Water has always been a draw for Carl St. John. He grew up swimming competitively and
was an all-area and all-metro selection during his high school years at Georgetown Prep.
At Cornell University, Carl swam for four years while majoring in biology. After graduation,
he joined the Alaska Department of Fish and Game as a research diver and spent two
years surveying the dive fisheries of Southeast Alaska, diving in support of invasive species
eradication, and collecting genetic samples for a population connectivity study. Today, Carl
is on dry land pursuing a master’s degree in biology at Cal State Los Angeles, a course of
study that brought him to Russia’s Lake Baikal last summer, the largest lake in the world by
volume and the oldest lake in the world at 21 million years, to do fieldwork on a group of fish

called Sculpins. Here Carl shares his passion for studying fish and explains the importance of
this work to the health of our global ecosystem as the climate changes. >

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