When Mount St. Helens erupted 
on May 18, 1980, Roger del Moral 
added the recovery of subalpine 
vegetation on the mountain to his 
research interests, which also include 
competition within stable alpine herb 
communities. “Upon hearing that a 
new environment had been made 
available for plant colonization,” he 
says, “I could not refuse such a 
unique opportunity to follow how 
ecosystems reconstitute themselves.” 
An associate professor of botany at 
the University of Washington at Se- 
attle, del Moral has done fieldwork 
in Washington, California, Alaska, 
and eastern Australia. He enjoys 
landscape and vegetation photogra- 
phy, and when not studying the often 
eerie, alien landscapes of Mount St. 
Helens, he reads science fiction. 
David B. Grobecker was hooked 
on anglerfish the first time he saw 
one in a tropical fish store. Currently 
a Ph.D. candidate and research as- 
sociate at the College of Fisheries 
of the University of Washington, he 
is working on the morphology and 
feeding ecology of Antennariidae 
anglerfish. An interest in predatory 
behavior has led him to study other 
fishes that employ a lie-in-wait strat- 
egy, including the stonefish and car- 
pet sharks. A fisherman himself, 
Grobecker is also a photography en- 
thusiast. By means of high-speed, 
light cinematography, at 800 and 
1,000 frames per second, and a gen- 
erous measure of patience, he has 
been able to document the extraor- 
dinarily fast feeding mechanisms of 
some anglerfish. 
6 
