Director Dr. Russell Moll to Retire

Director Dr. Russell Moll.

April 19, 2010

Contact: Christina S. Johnson, csjohnson@ucsd.edu, 858-822-5334

LA JOLLA – After a decade at the helm of the largest of the nation’s Sea Grant programs, California Sea Grant Director Dr. Russell A. Moll has announced his decision to retire by August’s end.

Known for his mild manners and quick wit, Dr. Moll can be proud of having greatly polished the image and credibility of CA Sea Grant.

A testament to his diplomacy, he also successfully negotiated changing administrations at nearly every institutional level affecting CA Sea Grant – at Scripps, where it is housed, the University of California, the National Sea Grant Office, in California and nationally.

Despite the shifting institutional winds and unprecedented belt tightening, Dr. Moll was able to double the program’s operational budget during his tenure. He departs having positioned the program on a smooth fiscal and programmatic path, and with much goodwill from its staff and many partners.

“In my eyes the most important thing I did was to mend some bruised relationships with investigators in California,” says Dr. Moll, a phytoplankton ecologist by training who was director of Michigan Sea Grant before coming to California. “We revamped the peer-review process of our research proposals and changed all the committees. It restored our credibility within the scientific community as serving not just a few university campuses but as being a truly statewide program.”

The internal stability of the greater Sea Grant family was also enhanced under Moll’s leadership, with the full integration of the CA Sea Grant Extension and Communications programs into the CA Sea Grant management team and by a sincere reinvigoration of collaborations with USC Sea Grant.

“Russ provided sage advice and sound leadership,” says Dr. Paul Olin, former director of CA Sea Grant Extension, currently a marine adviser for Sonoma and Marin counties. “When most of the university was losing FTEs (faculty full-time equivalents), he was able to hire four new advisers. He has been a tremendous supporter of the outreach activities of the extension program.”

Dr. Russell Moll in 2000, when he took the helm at CA Sea Grant.

“He really has brought a true spirit of congeniality and inclusiveness to Sea Grant,” agrees USC Sea Grant Director Dr. Linda Dugay. “He’s done a great job of collaborating with my program.”

Besides unifying the greater Sea Grant family, Moll established several key new partnerships with the state of California’s ocean-related entities, broadening and deepening dialogs with state managers, scientists and policy makers – and significantly leveraging the basically flat funding of federal dollars from the National Sea Grant Office.

Notable among the new partners is the Ocean Protection Council (OPC), established in 2004 to serve as a coordinating body for Gov. Schwarzenegger’s landmark “ocean action plan.”

This year, CA Sea Grant is administering five research projects on behalf of the OPC and collaborating with it and other state entities on a $4-million North Central Coast marine protected area baseline studies program. It was a collaborator on a similar baseline study of the Central Coast marine protected areas and, prior to this, had partnered with the California Department of Fish and Game and OPC on research to help implement the Marine Life Management Act and Marine Life Protection Act.

Dr. Moll was also a founding member and then chair of the board of trustees of the California Ocean Science Trust (2003-09), as well as a member of the UC Marine Council (2000-present).

“His work in bringing together the academic and resource management communities has really served us well,” says Brian Baird, Assistant Secretary for Ocean and Coastal Policy with the California Natural Resources Agency. “We are starting to see this research applied on the ground, where it should be.”

“Russ has been a fantastic, open, accessible conduit of information for the state and has been invaluable in creating valuable partnerships between the state and Sea Grant,” says Dr. Amber Mace, executive director of the OPC and a former CA Sea Grant State Fellow. “He has given so much service to ocean science in California.”

Director Dr. Russell Moll and wife Marilyn Moll.

Educational opportunities were also improved during Dr. Moll’s directorship.

As of April 2010, CA Sea Grant on behalf of the Delta Science Program (formerly the CALFED Science Program) had awarded 43 doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships in support of research related to the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

CA Sea Grant was itself directly supporting 20 graduate students participating on its funded research in 2010. Since 2000, about 300 “traineeships” have been awarded.

Reflecting the solidified relationships with state and federal marine-related programs in California, Dr. Moll was able to leverage and hence expand CA Sea Grant’s marine policy fellowship program by requiring matching funds from “host” agencies. State Fellows, both past and present, have become a prime source of staff for the California Natural Resources Agency, OPC and NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries, among others.

Although CA Sea Grant is, by design, a statewide program, Dr. Moll remained active in regional and national ocean research, education and policy, serving as treasurer of the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography (1996-2002), an appointed member of the Marine Protected Areas Federal Advisory Committee (2008-present), as well as member and past chair of the Birch Aquarium Faculty Advisory Panel (2003-present). He also co-chaired the Ocean Sciences Meeting in 2002, 2004 and 2006.

Prior to coming to the Golden State, Dr. Moll was based at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor for more than two decades, minus a short appointment at the National Science Foundation. He was assistant director (1985-93) and then director (1996-2000) of Michigan Sea Grant and former associate director (1998-2000) of the University of Michigan Biological Station, which oversees the Center for Great Lakes and Aquatic Studies. In 1994-95, he was a program officer for NSF’s biological oceanography division and before this director of University of Michigan/Michigan State University/NOAA Cooperative Institute for Limnology and Ecosystems Research (1989-96).

Dr. Russell Moll is a cycling enthusiast.

Before “dying and going to administration,” as Dr. Moll is fond of saying, he conducted research on plankton biology in the marine nearshore, salt marshes, African mangroves, Great Lakes, and “lesser” lakes and rivers, both temperate and tropical. He also studied aquatic invasive species in ship’s ballast water and spent 18 months in eastern Africa as a project team leader for the “Gambia River Study.”

Francophiles, Dr. Moll and wife Marilyn Moll, plan to spend two months in Southern France after his retirement. An avid cyclist, Dr. Moll also looks forward to more pedal time on his high-performance bicycle.