Tony Koslow
Former director, California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations
Research Oceanographer emeritus, Integrative Oceanography Division

Tony Koslow is the former director of the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI) and a research oceanographer emeritus in the Integrative Oceanography Division at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

Koslow’s research interests include deep-sea ecology and biological oceanography, combining an active field program with analysis of ocean time series. Since returning to Scripps in 2007, his field work has focused on the use of ecological time series to understand and manage human impacts on marine ecosystem, and the ecology of the micronekton: the small pelagic and mesopelagic fishes that dominate the water column. Koslow instituted sampling of the micronekton using multi-frequency acoustics and pelagic trawling on Scripps’ CalCOFI cruises and with the California Current Ecosystem Long-Term Ecological Research program. His analyses of the CalCOFI ichthyoplankton time series have shown that the mesopelagic fish fauna of the California Current is closely tied to long-term changes in midwater oxygen concentration and that fishes witih cool-water affinities have exhibited long-term decline that appears linked to local and large-scale oceanographic forcing, such as the strength of the California Current.

From 1989 to 2007, Koslow was a senior research scientist with the Marine and Atmospheric Research Division of Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO). He joined the CSIRO to lead its deepwater ecology program, where his research involved surveys of deepwater fish populations, discovering the broad diversity of seamount coral reefs in the South Pacific, assessing the impacts of deepwater trawling, and designing marine reserves to protect Tasmanian seamounts.

Koslow received a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and literature from Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree in zoology from the University of Washington. He received a Ph.D. in biological oceanography from Scripps Oceanography in 1980 and took up an appointment as a fisheries oceanographer at Dalhousie University before joining the CSIRO.

Koslow published “The Silent Deep” in 2007, a book about the exploration, ecology, and conservation of the deep sea, which was awarded the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Science Writing. Koslow’s awards include being a finalist for Australia’s Sherman Eureka Prize for Environmental Research, the Don McAllister Medal for Marine Conservation, a Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation, and the inaugural E.W. Fager Award from Scripps.

Last updated March 2013