Black biologist from Vancouver leads others to new heights in the great outdoors

Spidey sense

Sholes’ scientific pursuits landed him in the Pacific Northwest.

“All the different things in my life started lining up here,” Sholes, 38, said.

He scored a job as a fish biologist with the Vancouver office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2017. More recently, he attended a Juneteenth bike ride in Portland where he happened to bump into a scientist who teaches at WSU Vancouver. She connected Sholes with fellow faculty member Dr. Allison Coffin, a neuroscientist working on the sensory systems of salmon.

Within weeks, Sholes said, he’d been accepted into the graduate biology program at WSU Vancouver, where his academic research dovetails nicely with his work for U.S. Fish and Wildlife. They’re both focused on salmon hearing and the growth of salmon ears.

Yes, salmon have ears. (“It’s the most common question I get when I give talks,” Sholes said.) But hatchery salmon don’t hear as well as wild salmon nor is their “spidey sense” as well honed, he said. As a result, hatchery salmon waste much energy struggling and swimming erratically on their way back upstream from the ocean, Sholes said.

“Wild fish tend to have more developed neurological systems,” he said.

Hatchery fish — fed on a schedule, facing no threats and swimming in circles all day — have less.

“We’re spending millions sending these hatchery fish to the ocean, hoping they’ll come back to us, but they can’t hear well,” he said. “My research focuses on what part of the hatchery system causes this and how can we mitigate it?”