Glenn R. Parsons

Dr. Glenn R. Parsons, BS University of Alabama, Birmingham; MS University of South Alabama, Mobile; PhD University of South Florida, St. Petersburg. Dr. Parsons was an employee of the Florida Marine Research Institute from 1982 to 1987 and has been a professor of biology at the University of Mississippi since 1987. Dr. Parsons was a Dauphin Island Sea Lab Research Fellow and a Gulf Oceanographic Foundation Research Fellow. He has published over 50 research papers and book chapters, primarily on marine fishes and sharks, he has received over $3 million dollars in research grants and was recently awarded a World Wildlife Fund "Smartgear Competition" prize for his work on bycatch reduction in the shrimp trawl fishery. He was recently awarded his first patent. He has been nominated to the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council on multiple occasions by the Governor of Mississippi. After spending over 30 years in marine research, Dr. Parsons has sunk boats, been stung, bitten, and electrocuted by a multitude of marine organisms, has suffered through water spouts, hurricanes and oil spills, been poisoned by hallucinogenic fish toxin, has caught, tagged, and released literally thousands of sharks, and thrown up in many of the world's oceans (the details of many of the above can be found in his book "Sharks, Skates and Rays of the Gulf of Mexico"). Despite all of this he keeps a positive outlook and lives by the motto: "Hope for the best, plan for the worst." Dr. Parsons lives in Oxford, Mississippi with his wife, Cheryl and two children, Erin and T.J.