Ed Melvin is the Marine Fisheries Senior Scientist for Washington Sea Grant and an Affiliate Associate Professor, University of Washington School of Aquatic and Fisheries Sciences in Seattle Washington, USA. He maintains a program of collaborative research blended with directed outreach education to help solve conservation related problems in the North Pacific commercial fishing industry.

For the past 12 years, he has focused on developing methods to reduce the incidental mortality of seabirds in a range of commercial fishing gear types including drift gillnets, demersal longlines, and most recently, trawls and pelagic longlines. His current research is focused on developing methods to reduce seabird bycatch in southern hemisphere tuna longline fisheries. 

Ed is a member of the US Endangered Species Act Short-tailed Albatross Recovery Team, and serves on several international bycatch working groups including the Incidental Mortality working group of CCAMLR (Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources) and the bycatch working group of ACAP (Agreement for the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels).

He was recently awarded the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Stewardship and Sustainability Award for Science, Research and Technology, and the Pacific Seabird Group Special Achievement Award for his seabird conservation work in the Alaskan longline fisheries.