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Lower, Middle and Upper School Science |
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Anne-Marie Eklund teaches lower and middle school science and is the advisor to the 7th graders. She moved to Bend in August 2007 to start a new life far away from the big city of Miami, Florida, where she spent 17 years as a fishery biologist for NOAA-Fisheries and Everglades National Park.
She grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, but headed for the white sandy beaches of Florida's Gulf Coast for school at Eckerd, College where she studied marine biology - a natural choice at a college with over a mile of coast-line. Directly after getting her B.S. in Biology, she attended the University of Delaware College of Marine Studies and received her M.S. in Marine Biology and Biochemistry.
After three years up north, she longed for Florida again, and started working at Everglades National Park as a research fishery biologist. Her best memories of that job are flying in helicopters and riding air boats to get to remote sample sites in the marsh. Longing for bigger fish and saltier waters, she transferred to NOAA-Fisheries and began a long career studying reef fish ecology and grouper population biology. During that time, she completed her Ph.D. at the University of Miami. Her dissertation was on the effect of reef habitat complexity on predation and survival of juvenile reef fish. She spent many years studying the recovery of over fished grouper populations in the Gulf of Mexico, the Florida Keys and the Bahamas.
Although she enjoyed her career aboard ships and small boats, fishing and SCUBA diving, she has found that her true passion is teaching. She taught middle school science at Cushman School in Miami before relocating to Bend. One goal in moving away from the big city was to give her twin daughters more opportunities to roam in the wide-open spaces and natural beauty of Central Oregon. She and her family enjoy traveling, camping and skiing. She never tires of looking at or being in the mountains, so much so that she doesn't even miss the ocean.
