About The Ichthyologist's Insight

Staff

• Beau Thibodaux

  Founding Editor

  A former Baton Rouge political beat reporter who was reassigned to the aquaculture desk as punishment for an unflattering exposé and discovered he'd been covering the wrong legislature his entire career. Beau applies Watergate-level investigative frameworks to catfish migration patterns and treats spawning season like midterm elections. His editors tried to move him back to human politics; he refused.

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  A former Baton Rouge political beat reporter who was reassigned to the aquaculture desk as punishment for an unflattering exposé and discovered he'd been covering the wrong legislature his entire career. Beau applies Watergate-level investigative frameworks to catfish migration patterns and treats spawning season like midterm elections. His editors tried to move him back to human politics; he refused.

• Dr. Coral Odemba

  Standards Correspondent

  A Kenyan-British taxonomist who spent twenty years at the Natural History Museum classifying gobies and now writes about species identification with the righteous fury of a registrar who has discovered voter fraud. She considers common names a form of misinformation and will correct your Latin in her sleep. Her column 'Proper Names' is the most complained-about and most-read feature in the paper.

  Read full bio

  A Kenyan-British taxonomist who spent twenty years at the Natural History Museum classifying gobies and now writes about species identification with the righteous fury of a registrar who has discovered voter fraud. She considers common names a form of misinformation and will correct your Latin in her sleep. Her column 'Proper Names' is the most complained-about and most-read feature in the paper.

• Dr. Gill Finnsworth

  Civic Affairs Desk

  Marine biologist who has spent more time underwater than in meetings, which she considers a professional achievement.

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  Marine biologist who has spent more time underwater than in meetings, which she considers a professional achievement.

• Ezra Blumenthal

  Culture Columnist

  A former comedy writer who worked on three different late-night shows before burning out and moving to Monterey, where he began attending aquarium lectures for the free wine and stayed for the cleaner shrimp. Ezra covers territorial disputes, mating displays, and interspecies drama with the instincts of someone who has written punchlines for a living and now finds fish funnier than any human he's met.

  Read full bio

  A former comedy writer who worked on three different late-night shows before burning out and moving to Monterey, where he began attending aquarium lectures for the free wine and stayed for the cleaner shrimp. Ezra covers territorial disputes, mating displays, and interspecies drama with the instincts of someone who has written punchlines for a living and now finds fish funnier than any human he's met.

• Hank Bridgewater

  Field Reporter

  Forty-one years as a dive master in the Florida Keys left Hank with tinnitus, an encyclopedic knowledge of grouper territorial disputes, and an ex-wife who got the boat. He covers reef politics and predator-prey relations with the weary authority of a man who has personally witnessed three coral bleaching events and two marriages dissolve. Still dives every Tuesday.

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  Forty-one years as a dive master in the Florida Keys left Hank with tinnitus, an encyclopedic knowledge of grouper territorial disputes, and an ex-wife who got the boat. He covers reef politics and predator-prey relations with the weary authority of a man who has personally witnessed three coral bleaching events and two marriages dissolve. Still dives every Tuesday.

• Marina Vasquez-Okafor

  Letters Editor

  Former NOAA oceanographic data analyst who quit federal service after one too many budget cuts and started publishing her own water quality indices with editorial commentary. Covers population dynamics, water parameters, and habitat zoning with the fervor of a forensic accountant who just found a second set of books. Her articles contain more parenthetical citations than some peer-reviewed journals.

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  Former NOAA oceanographic data analyst who quit federal service after one too many budget cuts and started publishing her own water quality indices with editorial commentary. Covers population dynamics, water parameters, and habitat zoning with the fervor of a forensic accountant who just found a second set of books. Her articles contain more parenthetical citations than some peer-reviewed journals.

• Priya Chattopadhyay

  Institutional Memory Desk

  An evolutionary biologist turned science communicator who treats the fossil record like a political dynasty's family tree. Priya frames every modern fish behavior as the latest episode in a series that's been running since the Devonian, and she expects you to have watched the previous 400 million seasons. Her 'Deep Time Dispatches' column is beloved by people who think geological epochs are a valid unit of gossip.

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  An evolutionary biologist turned science communicator who treats the fossil record like a political dynasty's family tree. Priya frames every modern fish behavior as the latest episode in a series that's been running since the Devonian, and she expects you to have watched the previous 400 million seasons. Her 'Deep Time Dispatches' column is beloved by people who think geological epochs are a valid unit of gossip.

• Sven Lindqvist

  Weekend Editor

  A Swedish marine ecologist and professional contrarian who has made a career out of arguing that everything you think you know about fish is either oversimplified or backwards. He has defended lionfish invasion as 'market disruption,' called cleaner wrasse stations a 'protection racket,' and once published a piece arguing that hagfish slime is an underappreciated form of political speech. Peer reviewers dread him. Readers can't look away.

  Read full bio

  A Swedish marine ecologist and professional contrarian who has made a career out of arguing that everything you think you know about fish is either oversimplified or backwards. He has defended lionfish invasion as 'market disruption,' called cleaner wrasse stations a 'protection racket,' and once published a piece arguing that hagfish slime is an underappreciated form of political speech. Peer reviewers dread him. Readers can't look away.

• Tamsin Rookwood

  Public Records Fellow

  A former long-form journalist at The Atlantic who pivoted to ichthyological deep dives after a life-changing encounter with a cuttlefish in Sulawesi. Tamsin vanishes for weeks at a time and resurfaces with 5,000-word investigations into a single species' mating ritual, territorial negotiation, or migratory conspiracy. Her editors have learned not to ask for word counts or ETAs.

  Read full bio

  A former long-form journalist at The Atlantic who pivoted to ichthyological deep dives after a life-changing encounter with a cuttlefish in Sulawesi. Tamsin vanishes for weeks at a time and resurfaces with 5,000-word investigations into a single species' mating ritual, territorial negotiation, or migratory conspiracy. Her editors have learned not to ask for word counts or ETAs.

• Yuki Tanaka-Morrison

  Copy Chief

  A graphic designer who bought a betta fish during lockdown and became radicalized. Within eighteen months she had seven tanks, three subscriptions to aquarium journals, and a column at the Insight where her 'beginner questions' have a habit of exposing foundational contradictions in established fishkeeping dogma. The old guard finds her unsettling.

  Read full bio

  A graphic designer who bought a betta fish during lockdown and became radicalized. Within eighteen months she had seven tanks, three subscriptions to aquarium journals, and a column at the Insight where her 'beginner questions' have a habit of exposing foundational contradictions in established fishkeeping dogma. The old guard finds her unsettling.