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DR. PAUL JAMES STRUHSAKER (Fig. 1), ichthyologist and fisheries biologist, died on July 25, 2018. He was born in Lansing, Michigan on July 16, 1935, to Frederick P. and Esther A. Struhsaker. Paul had one sister, Anne Larsen, and two brothers, Thomas and James Struhsaker. Paul grew up in a family with strong interests in the conservation and wise use of natural resources. His mother was a secretary for the State of Michigan Department of Natural Resources. His father was head of the Michigan Department of Conservation's Lands Division and secretary of the state's Conservation Commission, who, among his many other accomplishments, played a major role in the land acquisition and creation of the Porcupine Mountains State Park. Unfortunately, Paul's father died at the early age of 49, when Paul was only 18 years old.
Paul's interest in natural history became evident in his high school years when he kept snakes in a terrarium in his bedroom. From snake keeper, he went on to study for his Bachelor of Science in zoology, fisheries and wildlife management, and geology from Michigan State University. During the summer and early fall of 1957, while still an undergraduate, Paul worked as a fisheries aide for the U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries (BCF) in Pascagoula, Mississippi.
Upon completing his B.Sc. in 1958, he was employed until 1965 by the South Atlantic Exploratory Fishing and Gear Research Station, BCF, in Georgia as a Fishery Methods and Equipment Specialist. In this position, he worked on trawling and dredging surveys to find new continental-shelf fisheries resources (Cummins et al., 1962a, 1962b; Struhsaker, 1969a). Although his employment was for fisheries research, one of his early publications was on the occurrence of the Minke Whale, Balaenoptera acutorostrata, near the Bahamas (Struhsaker, 1967). He subsequently worked with Harvey Bullis of the BCF Pascagoula, Mississippi laboratory on exploratory fisheries surveys, extending his trawling surveys into bathyal depths (Bullis and Struhsaker, 1970). Paul published two papers, including one in Copeia, on the life history of the Roughtail Stingray, Bathytoshia centroura (Bullis and Struhsaker, 1961; Struhsaker, 1969b). He also assisted with the development of new types of fishing gear. His collection of the deep-water fishes-Barbourisia rufa, Melanocetus johnsoni, and Thaumatichthys binghami, poorly-known at that time- resulted in his first...