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About Pasko Taxonomic Services

Mr. Pasko has 35 years of experience in bioassessment and environmental monitoring for wastewater treatment facilities. His taxonomic interests include marine arthropods, members of the “minor” phyla, and training new taxonomists. Other specialties include data management, data compilation and analysis, report writing, and program management. As the Data Management & Reporting Supervisor with the City of San Diego, Dean managed the production of more than 50 monitoring and compliance reports annually. He accepted an Environmental Supervisor position for the Orange County Sanitation District (OCSD) in 2007 where he oversaw the implementation and management of the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Receiving Waters Monitoring & Reporting Program. He directed the in-sourcing of the data analysis, reporting, taxonomy, and quality assurance aspects of the program; established a new taxonomy laboratory and invertebrate taxonomy training program; and re-designed the receiving waters monitoring program. He also managed the successful renewal of the OCSD NPDES Permit. Dean served as OCSD’s representative to the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project Commission Technical Advisory Group (CTAG), and served on various sub-committees, including efforts to standardize benthic assessment, assess DNA barcoding, develop State-wide standardized monitoring in coastal waters, and analyze regional monitoring data. Dean contributed to CTAG’s 40-year retrospective analysis of the impact of the Clean Water Act on southern California marine ecosystem, the effort to compare southern California’s Benthic Response Index with it’s European analog, and the development of a single biotic index for marine biological assessment for the US-EPA. Dean has been a member of the Southern California Marine Invertebrate Taxonomists (SCAMIT) since 1986, and served as Secretary from 2012–2017. As a consultant, he has identified benthic marine invertebrates from eastern Pacific coast ranging from northern Baja California, Mexico to Puget Sound, Washington, as well as the study sites in the tropical Pacific and Indio-Pacific.

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Services we offer

Dean works on large or small projects, independently or in collaboration with other laboratories and agencies. Dean’s aim is to help each client meet its regulatory requirements, established goals, and deadlines by providing the following services:

  • Project management
  • Identification of marine invertebrates from environmental surveys, specializing in marine arthropods and members of the "minor" phyla (sipunculid worms, polyclad worms, nemerteans, lophophorates, etc.)
  • Quality Assurance/Quality Control of marine invertebrate voucher collections, infauna sorting, infauna identification, enumerations, and taxonomic data
  • Training for benthic sample processing, sorting, infauna identification and enumeration procedures, best practices for voucher and literature maintenance, data recording and reporting, species name maintenance
  • Specimen voucher sheet preparation, review, and editing

All samples are identified to the lowest possible taxon, and separated into separate, labeled vials by species or higher taxon as requested. Reference collections, voucher sheets, photographs, and taxonomic guides may be provided upon request. Dean also offers report preparation and review, and has partnerships with other taxonomists and consultants who can provide identifications of other marine invertebrates (e.g., annelid worms, mollusks, echinoderms) as well as data analytics.

Recent Project History

Taxonomy Training and Infauna Sample Identification, Los Angeles, CA. City of Los Angeles – Environmental Monitoring and Technical Services

2015 – present. Project Coordinator/Trainer/Taxonomist. Subcontracting to Dancing Coyote Environmental, Dean performs taxonomic analysis on approximately 56 NPDES monitoring samples (arthropods and minor phyla), and provides taxonomic training to City staff on all invertebrate phyla encountered in the course of their environmental monitoring, reviews and updates their voucher collection, and provides identification keys, voucher sheets, and other materials.

Taxonomy Training and Infauna Sample Identification, Fountain Valley, CA. Orange County Sanitation District

2014 – present. Project Coordinator/Trainer/Taxonomist. Subcontracting to Dancing Coyote Environmental, Dean performs taxonomic analysis on approximately 30 NPDES monitoring samples semi-annually, and provides taxonomic training to District staff on Arthropoda and members of the “minor” invertebrate phyla (e.g., Cnidaria, Platyhelminthes, Nemertea, Sipuncula, etc.) encountered in the course of their environmental monitoring, in addition to providing identification keys, voucher sheets, and other identification materials as requested.

Invertebrate Taxonomy. Los Angeles and Long Beach, CA. Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach

2018 – 2019. Taxonomist. Subcontracting to Dancing Coyote Environmental, Dean helped coordinate and performed taxonomic QC of arthropods and minor phyla for 96 quadrate scraping samples from riprap and pier pilings as part of a broad biological survey representing upper intertidal, lower intertidal, and subtidal depth strata from the summer of 2018.

Invertebrate Taxonomy. San Diego, CA. U.S. Navy, SPAWAR Systems Center

2019 – present. Taxonomist. Subcontracting to Dancing Coyote Environmental, Dean performed taxonomic identifications of live specimens from San Diego Bay in response to the Navy’s quarterly sea turtle foraging survey to assess impacts of Navy activities on sea turtle movement and survival.

Invertebrate Taxonomy. Los Angeles, CA. Natural History Museum, Los Angeles County.

2019 – present. Taxonomist. Subcontracting to Dancing Coyote Environmental, Dean is providing expert taxonomic identifications of southern California pericard arthropods collected by the Marine Biodiversity Center staff for the Diversity Initiative for Southern California Oceans (DISCO) project, and which will subsequently be used for genetic analysis and the assessment of southern California biodiversity.

Provide Expert Scientific Services and Management. Newport, Oregon. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

2015 – 2018. Project Coordinator/Expert. Subcontracting to Dancing Coyote Environmental (DCE), Dean organized and coordinated expert scientific/professional services for synthesizing knowledge about the taxonomy, ecology, natural history of marine and estuarine invertebrates along the North Eastern Pacific Ocean and U.S. Arctic from the Beaufort Sea down to the Gulf of California. DCE coordinated a group of experts, including several of its own regular subcontracting taxonomists, to review the taxonomy, ecology, and population data of several thousand taxa housed within the U.S. EPA’s Coastal Biodiversity Risk Analysis Tool (CBRAT) database for correctness and to populate the database where little or no data or information existed. CBRAT is being developed to study and predict impacts of global climate change to the coastal marine environment. This contract covered marine Echinodermata, Polychaeta, and gammarid amphipods (Arthropoda).

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Contact us

Dean Pasko

deanpasko@yahoo.com

858.395.2104

Solana Beach, CA