Douglas McCauley began his career as a fisherman in the Port of Los Angeles, but migrated to marine science and now serves as a Professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at the University of California Santa Barbara and an adjunct Professor at UC Berkeley. McCauley has a degree in political science and a degree in biology from UC Berkeley and a PhD from Stanford University. He did postdoctoral research at Stanford, Princeton, and UC Berkeley. McCauley is an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow in the Ocean Sciences.