About Us

  Heather Shotzberger has served as an assistant hatchery manager at her family’s fish farm in Delaware since the early 1990s. Her duties have included the live capture of Delaware River striped bass broodstock by floating/drifting gill net and electrofishing, the hatchery spawning of broodstock, the care and rearing of larval and juvenile fish (primarily striped bass), the care and rearing of other species including yellow perch (Perca flavescens), largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides), various catfish species, and ornamental koi (Cyprinus rubrofuscus), and the regional and international packaging and shipment of live fish larvae.

    In addition to hatchery management experience, Heather worked as a seasonal fisheries technician for Environmental Consulting Services, Inc. (ECSI) in Middletown, Delaware from 1990 through 1998, and then as a full-time fisheries technician from 1998 through 2003. At ECSI, Heather performed Clean Water Act Section 316(b) impingement and entrainment sample collection at regional power plants and participated in field work supporting a major fisheries sampling program in the Delaware Estuary as part of PSEG’s Estuary Enhancement Program (EEP). Her duties under this program included day and night bottom trawl, pelagic trawl, ichthyoplankton, and beach seine sampling in the Delaware Bay and adjacent salt marshes, as well as seasonal fish ladder monitoring. Heather also provided Phase 1 (sorting) and Phase 2 (identification) of ichthyoplankton samples in ECSI’s taxonomic laboratory, and she was a crucial component of the lab’s QA/QC program. Heather also worked on a larger team of fisheries scientists and consultants in an elaborate field and laboratory program to evaluate the efficacy of underwater sounds, lights, and air bubbles as behavioral deterrents to fish at power plant cooling water intakes.
 
   Most recently, Heather worked in the blood products/components laboratory for the Blood Bank of Delmarva™, where she was responsible for preparing human blood products for distribution to regional medical facilities. ( Résumé )

  
  Shawn Shotzberger has worked with natural resource management since 1989 and in the environmental consulting business since 1994. He first began his professional career at ECSI, and while there he led significant portions of PSEG’s EEP biological monitoring program in the field, including the baywide bottom trawl and beach seine surveys. In 1998, PSEG retained Shawn to work directly within the EEP as a seconded project scientist. Upon its inception in 1994, the Estuary Enhancement Program was the largest privately funded wetland restoration effort in the United States. This ground-breaking project was conducted as part of PSEG’s New Jersey Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NJPDES) permit for the Salem Generating Station, and it entailed the restoration and/or preservation of over 20,000 acres of degraded tidal salt-marsh, the design and installation of numerous fish ladders in Delaware and New Jersey, the evaluation of fish behavioral deterrents at power plant intakes, and baywide and in-plant finfish monitoring, among many other components. Shawn managed substantial portions of the EEP’s implementation as a seconded staff-member at the EEP until 2005, when he was then recruited by AKRF, Inc.
 
   At AKRF, Shawn continued to advance his wetland restoration experience, and was responsible for the design and implementation of salt marsh and freshwater wetland restoration for projects throughout the region. His clients have included the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS Long Island Salt Marsh Restoration under Hurricane Sandy Resiliency Project #1), the mitigation banking firm Evergreen Environmental, LLC, PSEG Nuclear, EEP, New Jersey Transit (NJ Transit), Amtrak, the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT), and several high-profile resort developments in New York and New Jersey, among others. ( Shawn’s résumé and Shawn’s Artwork ) ( Résumé )