Marine Biologist Michael Castellini knows a lot about the disposition of different seal species. And they aren’t all cute and friendly.

During one of his trips to Antarctica to study seals, Castellini was collecting samples from a crabeater seal — a medium-sized seal that lives on the free-floating pack ice surrounding the southern continent — and carefully packaging his test tubes about ten feet from the beast. The research team was supposed to be watching the 550-pound (250-kilogram) crabeater, but it unexpectedly came spinning, snapping and snarling at the young Castellini.

“All of a sudden I had this ball of teeth roll right over me,” he recalls, “I swear it was levitating; a whirling dervish of seal.” Crabeaters are rather unpleasant when they get upset, Castellini explains. Luckily, he walked away from the mayhem with only a sprained wrist, spilled samples and a memorable story.

This hands-on learning experience is one of many that helped launch Castellini into a rich career of field and laboratory research focused largely on how marine mammals breathe, sleep and dive in the wild.

But today — after more than $6 million in research projects, over 100 scientific publications and nearly 50 graduate students — Castellini’s career is slowly taking a turn into the administrative realm with his new role as dean of UAF’s School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences. A juggling act he seems well-suited to fill with a smile.

But it all started with the science.

Starting in science
No matter who you talk to, it becomes clear fast that Castellini has an unfailing and infectious excitement for science. He knew this from an early age. After high school, he chose not to pursue a law degree like all of his other friends on the state-champion debate team. Instead, he chose to go to the University of California San Diego to study biology.

At the time, Castellini was most interested in how animals use chemistry to adapt to their environments. He wasn’t intent on studying marine biology specifically. But when a roommate gave him a book written by a marine biologist at the nearby Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the snowball of science that began Castellini’s career started to roll.

He took some classes from the author of the book, George Somero. Then he met one of Somero’s colleagues at Scripps, marine mammalogist Gerry Kooyman. It was then that Castellini realized he wanted to study marine mammals for real. Somero and Kooyman became Castellini’s PhD advisors at Scripps.

Soon, Castellini explains, he was part of the “marine mammal family tree.” He continued working as a post-doc studying marine mammals with Peter Hochachka from the University of British Columbia, expanding his work in Antarctica and gaining many years of experience “on the ice.” In 1989, he came to UAF as an Assistant Professor in the SFOS where he would successfully continue his research — and his hands-on approach to mentoring new students — for the next two decades.

Learning in the field
Over the years, Castellini has worked with more than 30 different species of marine mammals in the field. He explains — from firsthand knowledge — that harbor seals scratch like a cat, fur seal pups will bite you just for fun and that Weddell seals are like big, stuffed toys. But when asked to pick his proudest moment in science, he goes back to an early trip to Antarctica when he was part of a once-in-a-lifetime scientific discovery.

In the winter of 1978, Castellini flew to Antarctica with a plan to trap live Weddell seals and equip them with devices to record details of the dive — including how long they could stay underwater and how deeply they could dive. Castellini and his colleagues successfully trapped and mounted instruments on about 10 Weddell seals.

After about 10 days, the group was able to recapture the equipped seals and recover the instruments. Castellini opened the waterproof cases and discovered the intact, diving data. “It was the first-ever dive recording from a free-ranging seal anywhere in the world,” he recalls. “We were all thrilled. I remember that moment often.”

The data from this work and other experiments that same season revealed never-before known diving details of the Weddell seal. For example: While a few dives were over an hour, most dives last no more than 26 minutes; the longer the dive, the more lactic acid (a chemical produced during exercise with low oxygen) there is in the blood; a seal’s body temperature drops during long dives; amounts of hemoglobin (oxygen-carrying blood cells) change during dives; and blood glucose levels increase in the blood after a dive.

None of these diving details had been known before. And these results became part of Castellini’s first scientific paper published in 1980 when he was still a mere graduate student.

Teaching by example
Castellini’s early success as a graduate student might help explain why teaching and mentoring new students became a major part of his own scientific career.

When Castellini came to UAF in 1989, he brought with him Lorrie Rea — who would become his first PhD student. Rea was then a master’s student at the University of California Santa Cruz, studying fasting in elephant seal pups, and had worked with Castellini in the field. He suggested she come to UAF to pursue a PhD and she agreed.

Upon arriving in Fairbanks for the first time, Castellini had already arranged for Rea to conduct harbor seal surveys on Tugidak Island in the western Gulf of Alaska that summer and to travel to Antarctica to record Weddell seal dives (this time with satellite-linked instrumentation) that winter. Like Castellini in graduate school, Rea would hit the ground running. And the strategy worked.

Today, Rea is a wildlife physiologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and the program leader for the Steller Sea Lion Research Program based in Fairbanks. She fully credits much of her professional success to Castellini. “Ultimately,” she says, “the research opportunities that Castellini arranged for me directly led to the research I conduct today and to my current position at the ADFG.”

And she is not alone in her post-Castellini success. Over the years, Castellini has picked his students carefully and helped them find a place in science. His former students have gone on to work as faculty researchers, agency scientists, and veterinarians. “Careers have worked out well for most of my students,” Castellini reflects, “one even turned out to be an excellent underwater photographer.”

“One of the cool things about Mike,” says Rea, “is that he always tries to learn from his students. He sees the opportunities of learning and knowledge everywhere, which is why he is such an excellent teacher.”

Switching roles
In recent years, Castellini has naturally drifted away from the intense field work and mentoring and into a new role as the leader of the SFOS.

He officially retired from teaching classes and exited his UAF laboratory about three years ago. Today, Castellini’s new job as dean is largely to make sure that the SFOS’s 60-some faculty members and nearly 150 graduate students function well and that the school maintains its high scientific and academic standards. “Everything I do now,” Castellini says, “from finding lawyers to finding misplaced commas in theses, I thoroughly enjoy.”

When not working internally, Castellini makes a point of getting out often and staying in touch with more general, scientific concerns. Most recently, he has concentrated on two NSF-funded programs related to increasing the public’s awareness of climate change in Alaska.

The Center for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence is an effort to help ocean scientists reach broad audiences with their work. With Castellini’s help, SFOS is working with other institutions in Alaska to develop and maintain “COSEE Alaska,” one of about a dozen different COSEE sites in the nation.
Likewise, Castellini has participated in a series of public discussions on climate change in Earth’s polar regions — and how animals at these locations are critically dependent on sea ice — through Polar Palooza, an NSF-funded effort to spread polar science awareness. “I enjoy speaking in front of people and helping to translate science,” he says enthusiastically.

The new balance between academics and outreach provides a variety of activities that suit the energetic Castellini. “The hardest part of the job is the anti-time,” he says without taking a breath, “there’s just not enough time in the day to do everything that I want to do.” His enthusiasm for all-things-science is truly contagious.