Professor James Lindholm has found a way to get the public interested in marine science: He writes action thrillers

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James Lindholm isn’t what he seems.

In his office at California State University Monterey Bay, you’ll find a well-lit nook with a bookshelf of thick binders, a sketch of the California coastline penned onto a whiteboard and a wall covered with printouts and sticky notes.

But don’t mistake him for your typical professor.

Lindholm’s real office is the ocean, just a few miles away, beyond the beach and under the deep sea. And it’s there where you’ll find the underwater robots, submersibles and equipment that follow him on countless expeditions.

As the James W. Rote Distinguished Professor of Marine Science and Policy, Lindholm’s day job takes him across the globe. He’s spent more than three decades studying the secret lives of fish, tracking where they go and why. He’s written over 40 scholarly articles on fish ecology and is one of the few people who has spent time at the Aquarius Reef Base in the Florida Keys, the only underwater laboratory in the world. He has also frequently testified before Congress on efforts concerning marine monitoring.

When he’s not thinking about his research, Lindholm pens action thrillers. His protagonist, Chris Black, is an Indiana Jones-esque fictional character who, like Lindholm, studies the oceanic world. But Black also performs daredevil marine feats as he fights villains – including those who dump toxic waste in Monterey Bay and pirates who kidnap Black’s students on a trip to the Galapagos Islands. In Black, Lindholm unspools his fantasy of what a scientist-swashbuckler could be. And he delivers true-to-life science lessons along the way. 

The first book, situated in Carmel-by-the-Sea, where Lindholm lives, came out in 2020, and he’s found time every year since to write one more. 

I sat down with Lindholm to chat about his science and his latest book, “Calypso Down” the fourth in the Chris Black adventure series, which came out in March.

The following conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Lookout: You just published your fourth fiction book. Let’s talk about Chris Black’s origin story. How did you start writing fiction?

James Lindholm: One of the seminal moments I experienced in grad school was when I published my first science, peer-reviewed journal article. I remembered going to a committee meeting for a fisheries management council in New England. And my paper was handed to the members to guide their work. I was so proud of that, and just so excited. But then, when I came back for the next meeting, the following month, it was clear that nobody had read that paper at all. They completely blanked on it. And that was my first really stunning realization that communication was easily as important as collecting data. You really have to be able to communicate in a way that is accessible to non-scientists. Not long after that, I realized that no committee member or staff member and politician is ever going to read my scientific paper. What I have to do is queue up for them accessible bits that they can utilize strategically.

I’d read many novels on various subjects by that point. And I realized that the good ones not only tell you a good story, but also help you learn something new. So I decided at that point to start writing a novel that will introduce people to what marine research is really like.

Lookout: Where do you get your inspiration for the stories?

Lindholm: I have read a lot of spy novels since I was very young. If you look at the dedication to my first book, it was to my mom, who got me started with reading very early on. She gave me a lot of spy novels to read – I was probably reading more spy novels than I should.

Lookout: I definitely appreciate how you painted vivid pictures of the scenes in the books. Are they based on places you’ve been to or real events that happened in those places?

Lindholm: Yeah. The setting for the first book was where I live in Carmel-by-the-Sea. And it was about illegal dumping of toxic waste. Not long after the book was published, I saw a lot of stories about waste in barrels being dumped all over California. While it wasn’t happening in Carmel and not always in the ocean, it very much happened! It’s as if the things I imagined for the book were ripped from these headlines.

Once I started writing these books, wherever I go on research, I’m thinking about plot lines and background.

The second book, “Blood Cold,” came about when I was in South Africa on a research trip. And when I was there, I learned a lot about apartheid and what had gone on in South Africa. I started to imagine how the story would pan out if it occurred in South Africa.

Lookout: OK, so the stories were set in real places. How about the characters? Were they based on people you know? Wait a sec – are you Chris Black?

Lindholm: [Chuckles] I get asked that a lot. But no, Chris Black is taller than me, and he has more hair than I do. Chris Black has some adventures that I’ve experienced. But he’s not me.

And no character in any of the books is based on any one person that I’ve met. But a lot of the people that I’ve met show up in the books. I did not have a friend named Mac Johnson. But you will see bits of my friends in Mac. And Chris Black’s mom is not my mom, but in some ways she’s like my mom and my grandma. So, there’s some overlap, but no one character is “one-to-one,” if that makes sense.

Lookout: How did you envision Chris Black’s character?

Lindholm: I didn’t want to write a book where the scientists came up with the equation to solve global climate change. That didn’t interest me. What I wanted to do was just to tell a good adventure story that puts scientists adjacent to bad actors, and see what happens. And in this case, the scientists don’t back down. They respond.

I’ve spent my life at this interface of science and policy. And I’ve been in some tough management situations involving commercial fishing where the science community would often step back when confronted by sometimes aggressive stakeholders. So, it has always intrigued me to explore what would happen if the scientists said, ‘Oh, well, guess what?’ and confronted the situation.

Lookout: What do you think sets your books apart from other fiction?

Lindholm: A lot of marine fiction stories out there get a little fantastical. I want to try to make my novels more grounded. In this case, the books are supposed to show you a little bit of what actual science is like behind the scenes. For instance, our expensive technologies often break down, and weather is always an issue, regardless of where you are in the world. Then I add bad actors into the mix, and challenge the main characters to deal with it all.

Lookout: Your fourth book of the Chris Black adventure series, “Calypso Down,” came out in March. Congratulations. 

Lindholm: Thank you.

Lookout: Can you tell me about the inspiration behind this fourth book?

Lindholm: I’ve had the good fortune to participate in six missions with the Aquarius Reef Base in the Florida Keys, which is the only undersea laboratory in the world dedicated to research. And I thought, there’s gotta be a way to set an undersea laboratory in one of these stories. And that’s what “Calypso Down” is all about.

Lookout: How were you first introduced to the ocean?

Lindholm: I grew up being in the ocean all the time. I’m from California, but grandma told me that when I was 6 months old, I ate sand when I visited Cape Cod in Massachusetts, and that meant I was always coming back to the Cape and would always be interested in the ocean. That’s my earliest memories. For many years I was primarily just surfing all the time. And then later on, it also included scuba diving, and then ultimately scientific research.

Lookout: What was it like the first time you dove?

Lindholm: Oh, it was incredible. By the time I was a diver, I’d already been surfing for years and as a surfer, I was used to the flow of the ocean. Diving under the waves was an easy next step.

Lookout: You are now a professor in marine science and policy at CSUMB and much of your research involves diving. How did you marry your hobby with your occupation?

Lindholm: I didn’t have any scientists in my family. But my dad was a lawyer with the district attorney’s office. And so I had some experience observing the law.

At first, I thought I’d go to law school, and be a lawyer to support marine conservation goals.

But at the end of my undergraduate years, I changed my mind. I took two years off between undergrad and grad school to figure out what it is that really got me excited.

It was clear that I really spent all my time in the ocean. I thought maybe it would be a better strategy to find a career path that allows me to enjoy and appreciate the nuances of management practices but have a job that allows me to be out there in the world doing things.

And so I went to grad school back east, and have been working at the interface of science and marine policy ever since. I used to work for NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration]; I’ve gone to Congress to communicate with policymakers about marine protected areas and participate in discussions about new legislation concerning national marine sanctuaries. I even got to go to the White House years ago to help draft an executive order.

Lookout: Your research involves spending much time under the sea studying the landscape of fish ecology. Why is this type of research important?

Lindholm: So, when a marine protected area, or MPA, is set up in state or federal waters in this country, lines are drawn on maps to mark where certain things can or cannot happen in those areas. For example, fishing or oil and gas drilling along with other human activities are often excluded from marine protected areas. As a society, we need to understand if an MPA is meeting its goals of fish conservation, both from the perspective of management and so that those who are excluded from these areas can see whether or not the restriction is working as planned.

Research on the landscape ecology of fishes offers insights into where fish are, why they’re there, and how they’re using seafloor habitats. All of that information can help us better understand if an MPA is meeting its objective of fish conservation.

Lookout: So, how do you conduct your research?

Lindholm: Most of my science research involves imagery. Instead of extracting fish from the water, we use still photos and video images to study them. The camera platforms that we use vary depending on how deep we’re working.  

In deepwater, we use robots called remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, stereo-video mini-landers or human-occupied submersibles, where the scientist operates inside the sub. For shallower environments, we scuba dive to do that work. Here at CSUMB, I have an image archive with hundreds of hours of video from all over the world collected at different depths. And those data are really useful for my research.

Lookout: Are we going to see more books from you in the near future?

Lindholm: Yeah. I’m working on book five right now and it involves drug smuggling and opioids. I was in Cuba in February, and I think I have a book idea for that, too. And I just got back from Indonesia last week. … So, I have the broad topics laid out for the next four books or so. I just need to figure out what kind of “bad guys” or bad actors we’ll find in each location.

Lookout: What do you hope people take away from your book?

My real hope is that people would just enjoy them. I want to write books for people to read on airplanes, to read at the beach in the summer, to read at night or on a rainy day – a book they can take with them anywhere they want to go and just keep them engaged. And if they learn a little bit about marine science, great! That’s my goal.

Kristel Tjandra is a science journalist and a graduate of the UC Santa Cruz Science Communication program. You can follow her work at www.kristeltjandra.com. She wrote this piece as part of UCSC professor and Lookout Community Voices editor Jody K. Biehl’s class.