Dr. Megan N. Dethier is a Research Professor in the Biology Department at the University of Washington, but works full-time at the College’s Friday Harbor Laboratories on San Juan Island, where she is the Director. She received her undergraduate from Carleton College in Minnesota and her Ph.D. at the University of Washington. Since 1978, she has worked on shoreline ecology of the Pacific Northwest. Her first love is rocky shores, having spent childhood summers on the coast of Maine, but she now also works in mud, gravel and salt marsh habitats. She designed a marine habitat classification system for Washington state, and has worked with the National Park Service and various Washington agencies designing shoreline mapping and monitoring programs. Her current research efforts are mostly focused in Puget Sound, investigating the linkage between physical features of shoreline habitats and their biota, and the effects of human impacts (such as shoreline armoring) on this linkage. She greatly enjoys teaching marine biology to undergraduate students, which she has done at the Friday Harbor Labs for over 30 years, but also at marine labs elsewhere including Maine and Australia.