Donor Spotlight: Marine Biology Students Benefit from Local Fishing Club's Support

Fishing is a much-loved Southern California pastime, so an affiliation between a fishing club and a university marine biology program is a natural connection.

In 1925, a group of 25 local fishermen organized SCTC, a private fishing club, to pursue their favorite hobby. Based in Long Beach, it's the area's second largest and oldest angling organization after the venerable Tuna Club of Avalon. Local children know the SCTC through its co-sponsorship of the annual summertime Kids' Fishing Rodeo at Belmont Pier.

Today, SCTC's 236 members continue to embrace the motto, 'A club composed of anglers who love the open sea, the thrill of the strike and a fair fight.' Residents of the greater Long Beach area and Orange County, members cover the spectrum of professions and share a love of sport fishing along with an appreciation for maintaining a healthy marine ecosystem.

It was the idea of member Robert D. "Bob" Handloser to start the SCTC Marine Biology Education Foundation, which is a separate entity from SCTC, with its own board of directors. The foundation provides scholarships for California State University, Long Beach's highly regarded Marine Biology Program in the Biological Sciences Department.

"The SCTC Foundation's interest is that a number of club members have been or are Cal State Long Beach graduates, so there is an association with the university, and the club has an interest in conservation, so the marine biology program is a natural match with that," said club President Skip Smith.

Handloser, who earned bachelor's and master's degrees in industrial arts from CSULB, died in 2004, but his legacy lives on through the foundation as well as by a separate $100,000 donation from his estate to the marine biology program.

Handloser "was an educator and advocate for young people and a fisherman, and he thought we ought to get some donations and sell some of our old tackle and such and help out the kids at Long Beach State," recalled Jim Burtle, current SCTC Foundation president. "He always was a doer, somebody who wanted to make things better. He always liked young people and wanted to encourage them to get as much education as they could." Club members continue to contribute to the foundation.

"Since then, the foundation has given 34 scholarships totaling almost $50,000," said Christopher Lowe, a CSULB Professor and nationally recognized marine biologist whose research into marine fisheries earned him an honorary membership in SCTC. Scholarships are offered to selected bachelor's and master's degree students, many of whom have gone on to pursue doctoral degrees in marine biology or entered marine-related careers with public and private agencies and organizations.

This year's recipients include three graduate students and two undergraduates.

• Kim Anthony, a graduate student from Long Beach, is studying how offshore oil platforms may serve as important habitat to marine fishes.
• Graduate student Chris Martin of Huntington Beach is conducting scuba surveys around the offshore oil platforms off Long Beach and Huntington Beach to determine what fish species are found there and how these platforms may differ in their fish species compared to those in the Santa Barbara Channel.
• Ellen Kosman, another graduate student from Long Beach, also received an SCTC award this year for her on-going research on bryozoan settlement in Colorado Lagoon.
• Two undergraduate marine biology students, Jennifer Morrison and Stella Swanson, received awards this year based on their excellent academic records.

Moreover, the department is benefiting from Handloser's personal estate gift.

"He left it to the marine biology faculty to think of the best way to use those funds, so the faculty got together and decided that we would develop what is called the Handloser Graduate Student Tuition Grant. The primary purpose of the grant is to be able to offer an outstanding incoming student free tuition for a year. Our goal is to use this as recruitment tool to recruit the best of the best." Lowe said.

The endowment fund initially is providing one scholarship per year, with the goal of offering two scholarships starting in six years. The first recipient is Stephen Trbovich, who came to CSULB from the University of Miami.

Lowe and several of his students periodically speak at SCTC meetings about their fisheries research, and Burtle has attended CSULB commencement ceremonies on behalf of the foundation.

"I like to look at this as a great example of us connecting with our community and getting this support from our alumni base in a way that is geared toward their interest," Lowe said. "They're giving back to something that they really feel strongly about. While these gentlemen aren't marine biology graduates, they're fishermen. They love to fish and they see our program as the future of marine conservation in California. This, they hope, will enable their kids' or their grandkids' to continue to enjoy the recreation of fishing."