There are few people who understand the world of bonefish, tarpon and permit from as many angles as Dr. Aaron Adams.

Aaron is the Director of Science and Conservation at Bonefish & Tarpon Trust and a Senior Scientist at Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute. But long before the Ph.D. and the research papers, he was an angler — fishing since he was five and developing an early fascination with not just where fish were, but why they were there and what they needed to survive.

For more than 25 years, Aaron has worked throughout the U.S. and Caribbean studying fish, their movements and the habitats that sustain them. He has authored or co-authored more than 70 peer-reviewed scientific papers and three books, while helping turn that science into real-world conservation. Perhaps most importantly for anglers, he has a gift for taking complicated fisheries science and explaining what it actually means when we're standing on a flat with a fly rod in our hands.