Don Lawseth and Kari Nelson traveled through Australia, including Tasmania, for 4.5 months in the winter/spring of 2010.  Don and Kari met in 1990, when Kari was conducting field research for her Master’s degree in Biology, and Don was about 20 years into his 35 year career with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, managing the Robertson Creek Hatchery (Kari’s snakes were eating Don’s fish).  Kari also did her undergraduate degree in Biology at UVic and had a brief stint at UBC, studying the ecology of grassland birds, while Don was running DFO’s community involvement program in Vancouver.   Kari gave up on UBC when she decided that snakes had better hours than birds and when Don’s job with DFO brought them back to Vancouver Island.  Don focused on writing policy and managing funding grant programs to make Pacific marine fisheries more responsible and sustainable, while Kari did some consulting and volunteered with the Mount Arrowsmith Biosphere initiative.

 

About 10 years ago, Kari landed a job with the BC Ministry of Environment in Victoria where she still works on policy development for conservation planning and species at risk.  Don and Kari enjoyed a brief stint as colleagues on the species at risk file when Don took on responsibility for implementation of the Species at Risk Act for DFO in the Pacific Region.  Since retiring from DFO five years ago, Don provides fisheries consulting services, cooks wonderful meals for Kari and follows her around to interesting places in the world where she pursues her interest in biology, taking pictures of anything that will sit still long enough to compensate for the fact that she still doesn’t have a camera with image stabilization.