Nicholas Hughes - Professional Career

Professional Career

Hughes was passionate about wildlife, especially fish. He attended Oxford University, receiving a BA degree in zoology in 1984 and a Master of Arts degree, also in zoology, in 1990. From 1984 to 1991 he also worked in Fairbanks, Alaska as a research assistant at the Alaska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, part of the Biological Resources Division of the United States Geological Survey, and from 1990 to 1991 he was a student intern with the Sportfish Division of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. In 1991 he earned a Ph.D. in biology from University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF).

After receiving his doctorate, Hughes held a variety of positions, instructing at UAF's School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences in 1991-1992 and working as a research associate with UAF's Institute of Arctic Biology from 1992 to 1998. He held a post-doctoral fellowship from 1993 to 1995 with the Behavioral Ecology Research Group at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia and was a research associate there from 1995 to 1998. In September 1998 he became an assistant professor in the School of Fisheries and Ocean Science at UAF. Hughes studied stream salmonid ecology and conducted research both in the Alaska Interior and in New Zealand. He was a member of the American Fisheries Society.

During his scientific career, Hughes made notable contributions to the field of stream ecology and was considered a prominent Alaskan biologist. According to a Fairbanks reporter, Dermot Cole:

The focus of Nick’s professional life... dealt with what might appear to be a simple question, but was extraordinarily complex: “Why do fish prefer one position over another?” The logic of his research was that the combination of water flow and the streambed guide the way natural selection influences the behavior of individual salmon, grayling, trout and other species... A few times, I called him to let him know I would like to write about his life and his family connections, whenever a news story about his parents appeared, but he did not think it was a good idea, so it never happened. He deserved his privacy.... Here he was not a literary figure forever defined by the lives of his parents.

He resigned from his faculty position at UAF in December 2006, but continued to pursue his scientific research, and was a key scientist in an ongoing study of king salmon at the time of his death.