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Ron got his start
down the path to becoming a marine invertebrate zoologist
and ecologist with his first salt water aquarium in 1962,
in Great Falls, Montana, which housed his first marine invertebrate,
a small specimen of the infamous Aiptasia, along with
a couple of insignificant fishes. His interest piqued, Ron
went on to study zoology first at Montana State University
and later at the University of Washington, where he received
his M. S. and Ph. D., for work done investigating marine soft
sediment ecosystems. His first marine ecology course was taken
at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts,
and Ron has subsequently investigated marine ecosystems from
the Pacific Abyssal Plain to the Bering Sea to Indo-Pacific
and Caribbean coral reefs. He has maintained marine aquaria
more or less continuously starting in 1972.
He has written numerous articles for Aquarium
Fish Magazine, Aquarium Frontiers, Tropical Fish Hobbyist,
Aquarium USA, Marine Fish and Reef Annual, and other aquarium
magazines. He has also written for Natural History and Shells
and Sea Life as well as over 20 peer-reviewed scientific publications
dealing with marine ecology and molluscan biology. Additionally,
he has been on the editorial review boards of several scientific
journals.
Active in education for over 25 years,
Ron has taught at several universities in the United States
and Canada, including numerous times at the Bamfield Marine
Station on Vancouver Island, where he served as Assistant
Director. He is an Affiliate Associate Professor of Ecology
at Montana State University and works as an author, environmental
consultant and taxonomist from his home in Wilsall, Montana.
He is a world recognized authority in scaphopod mollusks and
turrid gastropods, and has been an invited speaker at over
10 scientific meetings.
Understanding that knowledge of the animals
and their biology is the best remedy for much of the false
mythology in the aquarium literature, he has been actively
speaking to many aquarium societies and conventions. Ron believes
that only by increasing the knowledge base available to the
average aquarist, can we hope to have a successful and humane
hobby.
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