Ian Tattam never had much doubt about what he was going to do when he grew up. "I think once I figured out I wasn't going to be a basketball star, fisheries seemed like the only other choice."
Ian is the 2004-05 recipient of the Flyfisher's Club of Oregon Graduate Fellowship. Each year, the Flyfisher's Foundation of Portland contributes funds for this award to help support one OSU student studying one of the endemic wild stocks of fish in Oregon. Ian, who grew up in Portland fishing the coast streams of the Nehalem River system, seems like the ideal candidate.
"My dad started me on fishing when I was about five. I can't even remember not knowing how to fish," he says. "At first it was just about catching fish, but as I got older, I grew into more of a conservation angler. My ambition was not just to catch fish, but to catch wild fish in a natural setting."
Ian cultivated that interest over the years, steeping himself in technical journals and volunteering for habitat restoration projects. While earning his bachelor's of science degree in environmental science at Portland State University, he completed an undergraduate thesis designed to contribute to the management of wild steelhead in the Columbia Basin. His research, published in the North American Journal of Fisheries Management, looked at scale patterns as a means of distinguishing unmarked hatchery steelhead from wild steelhead.
After earning his undergraduate degree, Ian spent two years working for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife in John Day and LaGrande. He also volunteered for several projects aimed at restoring native salmonid habitat in the John Day basin. It was this experience that moved him to become a master's student at OSU, under the mentorship of a professor who is known for inspiring the stewardship ethic.
"If you work in fisheries around John Day, there's one name you hear all the time, and that's Hiram Li," says Ian. "He's out in the field a lot, and he's one guy who's never short on ideas. It's a challenge for me to sort through those ideas sometimes, but I really admire his enthusiasm."
Because of his experience in the John Day basin, Ian had a good sense of local fisheries issues and chose his research topic quickly, just three months after starting his graduate program. He is comparing the life history patterns of two types of wild, native summer steelhead: those that migrate widely between tributaries and the South Fork of the John Day River, and those that maintain small home areas within tributary streams until they emigrate to the ocean. Looking at the effects of various human activities on these two types, he hopes to see correlations between summer habitat temperature and overwinter survival. This study will help determine critical habitat needs and prioritize various restoration options for native salmonids, not only in the John Day basin but in other steelhead producing streams of central and northeastern Oregon.
"This is very ambitious work, but Ian is very capable," says Dr. Li. "He is absolutely on top of the scientific literature and has accumulated a store of knowledge that is only acquired by spending lots of time observing streams and fishes. He wants to understand everything related to salmonid fishes and their ecology."
