Dr Colin Levings states "Robert Ray Parker was a fisheries scientist who conducted pioneering research programs on salmon in British Columbia, working out of the Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo from about the late 1950s to about 1975. Born in the USA, he obtained his M.A. (1957) and Ph D (1959) at UBC with his work on Chinook salmon. He contributed many scientific papers on this species as well as on pink salmon, parasitic copepods, pollution studies and plankton ecology. One of his major studies was in the mid 1960s on juvenile pink salmon from Bella Coola river estuary where he used the research barge Velella as a base for lab experiments and major tagging projects. This was one of the first major programs on juvenile salmon in the region. He moved to Australia in the late 1970s." |