(12/22/25) BATON ROUGE, La. — From fish movement to oyster reef restoration, Jeff Plumlee’s work at the LSU AgCenter and Louisiana Sea Grant is redefining fisheries ecology in Louisiana. Because of his innovative work, Plumlee was named an Early Career Research Fellow by the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

This award is rarely given to fisheries scientists, and Plumlee is the first AgCenter scientist to receive it.

Plumlee leads a lab with undergraduate students, graduate students, technicians and postdoctoral researchers. His work looks at several key marine fisheries areas including habitat and fish production, oyster restoration, fish movement and tracking, and invasive species.

“The heart of everything we’re doing is fisheries ecology, but we’re approaching it in a lot of different ways,” Plumlee said.

One project uses satellite tags to track tripletail, a large coastal fish, and record the fish’s movement, water temperature and other data, giving scientists information they couldn’t otherwise gain.

“We tagged six fish last year, and of those six tags, two of those tags reported their location and tracked the fish all the way from Venice, Louisiana, to the most northern part of Mexico,” Plumlee said.

As Louisiana’s fisheries extension specialist, Plumlee engages directly with fishermen and stakeholders, helping teach best management practices and contribute to cooperative research. He views extension as relationship-driven and values building trust within the fishing community.

Plumlee said he has enjoyed stepping into a role where he gets to be subject matter expert for Louisiana fisheries, which has the third highest fisheries landings by volume in the United States.

“I really feel like I made it,” he said.

While he tracks fish, one can track his path to fisheries back to pizza deliveries. Plumlee spent 10 years after high school delivering pizzas. He said he wasn’t ready for college. He eventually moved from his native Indiana to Texas.

“I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” he said. “I was working fast food jobs, and eventually I decided I didn’t want to do this anymore, so I applied for Pell Grants and started my undergraduate work at Texas A&M Galveston.”

Plumlee, who started college at 27, has the student ID he got in 2013 sitting on his desk as a reminder of his unusual academic journey. Even then he didn’t set out for a career in fisheries. Desperate for a job that wasn’t fast food related, he was hired by a professor in a fisheries lab a few months into his freshman year.

His first project was going to the docks in Galveston and gutting sharks and taking life history samples — looking at their age, diet and growth.

“As soon as I started doing it, I was like, this is exactly what I want to do,” he said. “I loved fishing, but I didn’t realize I liked the science as much.”

It is evident he truly enjoys his work. His office, with its fish floor lamp and fish art, reflects his passion. He speaks enthusiastically about his projects while passing his love for fisheries onto students working in his lab.

Plumlee was honored to be named an Early Career Research Fellow by the Gulf Research Program and noted that his Ph.D. adviser at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill received the fellowship in its inaugural year. The adviser was the first person Plumlee texted after receiving notification of the award.

“Out of all the things that I could have been proud of for this award, it was probably getting to write that text,” he said.

Plumlee said he will use some of the award money that comes with his fellowship to fund student research projects.

“I think that taking this money and continuing to pay it forward so that other students can have the opportunities like I was given right off the bat, a weirdo 27-year-old college freshman coming in, I think that that's the best possible use,” he said.

Jeff Plumlee, LSU AgCenter and Louisiana Sea Grant fisheries specialist, in Eloi Bay, Louisiana, was named an Early Career Research Fellow by the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. Photo by Owen Henderson.

Jeff Plumlee, LSU AgCenter and Louisiana Sea Grant fisheries specialist, works in his lab with undergraduate student Katherine Patron on identifying marine species. Photo by Tobie Blanchard/LSU AgCenter