Retired County Extension Director-Ottawa County and the first Michigan Sea Grant Agent in Michigan, Chuck Pistis, was honored as the 2014 Dr. Howard A. Tanner Award recipient for his achievements in furthering the understanding of the positive impact sport fishing has on local Communities.

Chuck brought science to the sport fishing community and spent time educating anglers and bringing sport fishing groups together with fisheries biologists and scientists at MSU.  He pioneered the use of net pens to imprint salmon fingerlings to local harbor mouth waters so they would return when their life cycle was nearing completion.   Survival rates sky rocketed as compared to hatchery released fingerlings.

Chuck was instrumental in starting the whitefish commercial co-op for commercial fishers and some tribal fishers.  This effort substantially increased the market and price the fishers received for their catch.  This resulted in lesser interest in getting game species sportsmen target from being reclassified for commercial harvest.  He was the first to find a zebra mussel in Lake Michigan and it was from there that Michigan Sea Grant began developing an interest in invasive species in the Great Lakes.

He has always been interested in the economics of sport fishing and helped develop the Catch and Cook Program which allowed charter clients to have local restaurants prepare their catch as they came off the water.  Chuck’s strategy has always been to work with leaders of sport fishing groups so that the science and information would be passed along throughout the associations and organizations.