Fish and Sticks
Meet the marine biology student who tosses salmon at Pike Place Market and keeps the beat on the Husky Marching Band drumline.
Ryan Shapero, ’27, is a bit of a showoff — in the best possible way.
The second-year marine biology student spends his school days studying the physiology of sea creatures and his weekends putting this knowledge, and his magnetic showmanship, to use as one of Pike Place Market’s famous fish throwers.
“The other day I was sifting through mussels, picking out the dead ones, and I took out the stomach to see what was inside,” he says, laughing. “That’s not a normal thing to do.” Maybe not normal among his coworkers at Pike Place Fish, where Shapero’s worked since the summer of 2023, but perfectly normal for a biologist. He particularly loves when kids come up with the oddest questions. “Multiple times I’ve just been, like, explaining crustacean morphology to a 7-year-old. And they’re into it!”
Shapero joined the Husky Marching Band as a bass drummer in the 2023–24 season, when the band played at Husky football games across the country.
A lifelong Seattleite and a Roosevelt High School graduate, Shapero says he found his way to the University of Washington because he “wanted to go to a good school, but still eat [his] mom’s cooking on weekends.” He fell in love with environmental science in high school, but an eleventh-hour application mistake led him to applying for the UW’s environmental studies program (which focuses more on an interdisciplinary model of humans and the environment) instead.
Though his childhood home is within walking distance, he’s found a new one on campus, thanks in no small part to the community he’s built as a member of the UW Husky Marching Band. The 2023–24 season, his first on the drumline, was an “unreal experience,” he says — a big year for the band as they accompanied the football team to a series of playoffs and championships that took them to Las Vegas, New Orleans and Houston.
Traveling with the band may sound glamorous, but the fish market has brought him more brushes with celebrity. His second day on the job involved an intro to baseball Hall of Famer Derek Jeter and comedian Joel McHale; last summer he threw a 25-pound salmon to model and cookbook author Chrissy Teigen. Now in his second year there, he says he’s gone from working only over school breaks to picking up weekend and odd shifts here and there, just for the joy it brings him.
“There’s nothing I’d rather do than physical labor and sell fish for 10 hours on my Saturday — that’s what makes me happy.”
Shapero holds the 25-pound salmon purchased by celebrity Chrissy Teigen.
A fish-throwing drummer may sound unlikely, but Shapero’s two passion projects have more in common than you would think. “The two biggest parallels are the performance aspect and the fact that everything is motivated by pride in what we do,” he says. “We do things right here, and we’re proud of that, and we’re going to work hard and make something good. [In both roles] it makes us so tight — like a second family.”
Shapero’s friends don’t seem to mind when he shows up covered in fish scales, because he tends to bring along a feast fit for royalty. “Last month, we had black cod, swordfish, oysters, scallops, and I’m like, ‘I need you to appreciate that we’re a couple of broke college kids in a crummy apartment, and we’re eating, like, $250 worth of seafood right now.”
Shapero is excited about wherever his future takes him, even if that’s right where he is. “I may just end up the most over-qualified fishmonger of all time.”
Story by Chelsea Lin // Photos courtesy of Ryan Shapero
