Doug Laughlin

Doug Laughlin

Love of and Service to California’s outdoors.

Doug Laughlin’s life, from child to senior, has been shaped by his love of and service to the outdoors. 

From an early age, Laughlin knew the outdoors would be his life. He became an avid outdoorsman as an Eagle Scout, providing ethics that drove his life in the outdoors as a diver, boater, fisherman and volunteer.

He became a world-class diver who devoted his skills to saving California aquatic species and helping others. As a scuba diver, Laughlin was perhaps most widely known as the guy who developed a skill to remove barnacles, mussels, slime and hard scale from ocean-going hulls. For over 20 years, he provided that service to hundreds of boat owners. 

An accomplished boater and repairman, an angler with the skill to fish for all marine species including salmon, halibut and tuna, Laughlin was equally at ease on lakes and streams as on sea and shore, casting for anything that swims. Whether he is sport snorkeling for abalone or setting traps for Dungeness crab, Laughlin is a master sportsman. 

Adept at underwater photography, Laughlin was hired by renowned cinematographer Al Giddings to capture a whale shark in action. Later hired by ABC and KGO television, he became a filmmaker on all levels of stories, including news, sports and special events. He won a series of Emmys and is revered as one of America’s best outdoor videographers. In his own words, “As a videographer, the camera is a very powerful tool that offers viewers a glimpse into our amazing environment.”

Laughlin dove for abalone for 50 years, always snorkeling in search of giants. Barring bad weather, he never missed an opener for Dungeness crab. His biggest tuna weighed 155 pounds, and he participated in 20 straight salmon openers, taking more than 500 people out for salmon while declaring, “Unless the ocean is nasty, we’re going.”

As a volunteer diver at Steinhart Aquarium of the California Academy of Sciences, Laughlin maintained three large aquarium tanks, often connecting with different fish species and many in the public viewing him. He was a volunteer with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, supporting marine enforcement, marine research activities, waterfowl hunter checkpoint stations, kids fishing events, state lands improvement projects, creel surveys, abalone checkpoints, stream bed classification, hatchery fin clipping, outreach festivals, game warden “grizzly support” and many administrative duties. As an abalone diver, Laughlin served on CDFW’s recreational abalone advisory committee (RAAC), and represents California’s sport abalone diving interests.

He was well known as a Board member of the Coastside Fishing Club, based out of Pillar Point Harbor on the San Mateo County Coast and helped craft the group’s 15-year+ chinook salmon net pen acclimation program, where roughly 750,000 salmon each year - totaling more than eight million salmon - have been protected in a net pen, fed and acclimated to saltwater before being released. Millions of fish have thus been saved from water pumps, diversions and predators.

Laughlin helped establish and operate countless fishing derbies, veterans fishing and crabbing events, disabled kids fishing events, family fishing events, outreach at fairs and fishing festivals, and hatchery vaccinations. He was selected to participate in the Whale Safe Fisheries (Whale Entanglement Working Group), helping to set recreational salmon fishing seasons by the Pacific Fishery Management Council and negotiating seasons, gear restrictions, depth limits and other regulatory changes by CDFW for our ocean fisheries. And, he continues to mentor Scouts in their quests to climb the ladder of scouting and become Eagle Scouts.

Every organization needs an ethics-guided hero behind the scenes who can master details, results, schedules and team work. For many in California’s outdoors, that person was Doug Laughlin.