STEVE PALUMBI

Steve's research interests are widespread, and he has published on a variety of marine and terrestrial systems including the genetics and evolution of sea urchins, whales, corals, sharks, spiders, shrimps, bryozoans, and butterfly fishes. He has also published extensively on uses of genetic techniques in evolutionary and systematic studies, larval ecology and dispersion, and mechanisms of reproductive isolation and their influence on patterns of speciation in marine systems. A current focus of his research is on the use of molecular genetic techniques for the identification of whale and dolphin products available in commercial markets. After 11 years in the sun, Steve moved himself and his laboratory from the University of Hawaii to Harvard in September 1996. He, his physician wife, and their two children have settled in Lexington, MA. The family dog has just about stopped shivering, and the children have learned to wear shoes.

Education
1974-1978 Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, B.A. Biology
1978-1984 University of Washington, Seattle, WA, Ph.D Zoology

Employment
1995-1996 Director, Kewalo Marine Lab, University of Hawaii
1996- Professor, Department of Organismic nd Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University

Academic Honors
1978-1981 National Science Foundation Pre-doctoral Fellowship
1983 ARCS Foundation Fellowship
1984 Buell Award, Ecological Society of America
1990 Matsuda Fellowship Award for Faculty Research
1991 University of Hawaii Regents Medal for Excellence in Research
1996 Pew Fellowship for Marine Conservation Research

ABSTRACT

Steve pioneered genetic testing to identify sea creatures from samples of their tissue. In October he received a $150,000 Pew Fellowship to advance his current project, and that was good news for whales. All commercial whaling was halted in 1986, but countries may obtain permits to kill a limited number of certain species for research. Parts of the whales not needed for research may be sold, which is why one can buy smoked whale bacon in Japan or a whale steak at the grocery store in Korea. Suspicious that more whale meat was appearing in Asian markets than had any right to be there, Earth Trust, a nonprofit agency in Hawaii, asked Professor Palumbi whether he could tell which species of whales were being retailed in bits and pieces. That was easy, if time-consuming, to do genetically. Palumbi and colleagues went to Japan, copied the DNA of whale-meat specimens, brought the copies home for DNA sequencing, and discovered that blue, fin, humpback, and other whales that ought not to be going to market were. Such discoveries help the international body monitoring the killing of whales enforce rules that had been virtually unenforceable.