About Sam McClatchie

Oceanographic expertise

Sam’s experience in fisheries oceanography includes a PhD thesis on krill, work on sardines and anchovies in California, and on pilchards in South Australia.  He also worked on albacore and temperature fronts off the northwestern U.S., and on plankton and fronts off New Zealand. Sam understands the relationships between plankton, baitfish, their predators, and ocean structure like temperature and chlorophyll fronts, eddies, currents, and bathymetry. This knowledge has been applied to Fishing Maps providing a solid scientific foundation for the product.

Deep  experience in California/ Baja and New Zealand

Fishing Maps specialises in California/ Baja and New Zealand — the two regions that Sam knows best through more than two decades working as a research scientist for NOAA in California and NIWA in New Zealand. Sam is an expert on the fisheries oceanography of California and wrote an entire book on the subject. He has numerous scientific publications focused on krill, on sardines & their predators, on ocean structure like fronts and eddies, and on the regional fisheries oceanography of California & New Zealand. 

From his 11 years working  at NOAA, Sam is known among the scientists at  NOAA and NASA who maintain the satellite data used in Fishing Maps. His connections with these scientists are invaluable when detecting and trouble-shooting problems with the data, if they arise.

Highest quality maps

Sam is a programmer and data analyst as well as an oceanographer. He created Fishing Maps from scratch using coding in Python, R, and shell scripting. He is intimately familiar with the product so he can maintain and update the software, as well as create improvements, and add new features. All Fishing Maps are generated every day by customized software to produce top quality maps.

Responsive service

Fishing Maps is a small New Zealand company, based at Huia in the beautiful Waitakere Ranges outside Auckland, New Zealand. Sam is connected to the world by fast fibre Internet, making him easily contactable by email or by WhatsApp call (free for international calls). Sam is responsive to his clients, addressing problems quickly and efficiently to provide a trusted and reliable service.