When he was growing up, Rikeem Sholes’ knowledge of the great outdoors was as flat as his TV screen.
“I didn’t get out at all,” Sholes said. “I didn’t start going outside until my early 20s — about the time I started working as a biologist.”
Monitoring hatchery fish along the Columbia River may seem an unlikely career for a Black kid from inner-city New Orleans, but public television documentaries about the wonders of underwater life motivated Sholes.