Bill retired recently from his position as a Special Assistant at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. He had served as the WDFW representative to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council for 20 years, and was Vice Chair of the Council in recent years. For most of his time on the Council, he chaired the Council’s committee that interfaces with the North Pacific Observer Program through many changes to the program. Those included a major redesign of the partial coverage segment of the program and adding electronic monitoring to the partial coverage program. Throughout his career he has been engaged with fishery monitoring, beginning as a biologist for the Nisqually Tribe in 1976, counting and sampling the tribal members harvest of salmon. The WDFW unit he oversaw until a couple of years ago managed non-Indian fisheries in the Columbia River; most unit members served as fishery monitors either full-time, or as needed during times of high catch rates. No doubt, fishery monitoring is the foundation of sustainable fishery management.