Vol. XXV, No. 7
July 2005
Thanks to efforts by Rick Steiner and the Shipping Safety Partnership, working with Senator Ted Steven's staff, the senator introduced legislation to renew the 5-cent-per-barrel tax on imported oil and raise the cap on the fund to $3 billion. The legislation passed, now allowing money to be set aside in a federal oil spill liability trust fund to pay for a wide range of oil spill–related expenses. The original oil spill liability trust fund collection ended in 1996. Steiner and the SSP are working to make some of the funds available to increase oil spill response and prevention capabilities in Alaska's Aleutian Islands.
Alaska Sea Grant and the National Sea Grant Office will have a significant presence at the September meeting of the American Fisheries Society in Anchorage. Sherri Pristash of Alaska Sea Grant is coordinating the 23rd Wakefield Fisheries Symposium on North Pacific rockfishes September 13–15, and Emory Anderson, NMFS liaison to the National Sea Grant College Program, is an organizer for the symposium "Partnerships for a Common Purpose: Cooperative Fisheries Research and Management," September 13–14. Milton Love of the University of California Santa Barbara will give the keynote address at the rockfish symposium, and National Sea Grant director Ron Baird will address the partnerships symposium. Alaska and National Sea Grant will each have a booth at the AFS trade show, September 12–14, staffed by Kathy Kurtenbach and Jim Murray respectively.
Megan Agy, Alaska Sea Grant's program monitor from the National Sea Grant Office, will be in Anchorage for the AFS meeting, and she will participate in the Alaska Sea Grant proposal review panel September 9. She will also make presentations to students in Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau on National Sea Grant fellowships. Alaska Sea Grant Advisory Committee members based in the Anchorage area, and Ron Baird and other National Sea Grant visitors, are invited to the Marine Advisory Program open house September 12 and a dinner that evening with Sea Grant director Brian Allee and staff.
Rick Steiner, professor and conservation specialist with the Alaska Sea Grant Marine Advisory Program, was honored recently by the United Nations and the Pakistan government.
Steiner received a certificate of appreciation and a plaque as a thank you for his efforts to help Pakistan assess damage after the July 2003 Tasman Spirit oil spill. He also helped plan a strategy for restoration and to reduce future spills.
Pakistan's minister of environment, Major Tahir Iqbal, presented the award to Steiner during the Tasman Spirit Oil Spill National Symposium in Karachi, May 31. Steiner served as the chief technical advisor to the Pakistan government for its National Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) program. This was the first comprehensive NRDA program to be conducted in a developing country, and it has provided a model that the U.N. can use globally. Steiner also made several presentations at the symposium in Karachi.
Rick Steiner presented the U.S. and Bering Sea perspective at the Arctic Shipping Workshop in Oslo, Norway on May 9–10, at the invitation of the World Wildlife Fund, to outline a strategy to address the increase in arctic shipping in coming decades.
Steiner published the article "Ecological crisis of the world and suggestions for Ogasawara," translated into Japanese, in the book The Environmental Culture of the Ogasawara Islands, Seen from the Asia-Pacific Regions, by Heibonsha Limited, Publishers, Tokyo, 2005.
Don Kramer traveled to California at the request of California Sea Grant Extension to deliver HACCP lectures to seafood processors in Irvine and San Francisco.
Ray RaLonde attended the statewide Agricultural Leadership meeting hosted at UAF by the School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences. For the first time, aquaculture will be included in Alaska's agriculture plan.
Terry Reeve, MAP agent in Bethel, has moved into an office next door to the Cooperative Extension Service at UAF's Kuskokwim campus. Reeve's phone number, (907) 543-4560, remains the same.
SFOS faculty Ray RaLonde, Tom Weingartner, and Tony Gharrett were honored for research excellence by University of Alaska President Mark Hamilton at a reception for the Board of Regents and outstanding faculty, in Fairbanks on June 21.
A feature article written by Doug Schneider on Alaska aquaculture, "Alaska's half-shell dreams" appeared in the June Alaska Business Monthly magazine. Schneider reports that while Alaska oysters sell for twice the price of oysters from the lower 48, the state's growers are overwhelmed by customer orders. Co-ops such as the Kachemak Bay Shellfish Grower's Cooperative are considered a huge factor in the success of the individual farms getting product to market.
Kurt Byers, chair-elect of the National Sea Grant Communications Steering Committee, led two sessions at the communicators meeting at Sea Grant Week in Rockport, Maine, in June. He organized the "icebreaker" session, as well as a session on communication projects. For talent night, Kurt did a swing dance routine and organized a Sea Grant blues band, with Dave Partee on bass guitar.
Partee gave two presentations at Sea Grant Week, on modern Web design technologies and Photoshop techniques for Web designers, and he led a discussion on trends in Web technology.
Alaska Sea Grant will co-host a marine science class for UAF's Alaska Summer Research Academy (ASRA) July 18–29, including a weeklong stay for campers at UAF's Kasitsna Bay Laboratory. ASRA is an academic camp for teens (http://www.uaf.edu/asra/). SFOS Ph.D. graduate Ann Knowlton will be the lead instructor, assisted by Casey Debenham. The students registered to participate, ten in all, will be able to examine tidepools during one of the lowest tides of the year.
Alaska Sea Grant presented a camp scholarship to high school student Nelson Crockett of Brevig Mission, Alaska.
The Gulf of Alaska: Biology and Oceanography, edited by Phillip R. Mundy, was recently published by Alaska Sea Grant. The contents of the book, originally compiled for the Exxon Valdez Trustee Council as part of the Gulf Ecosystem Monitoring program, were updated for this new book. Expert researchers in several disciplines contributed to the science and socioeconomics of the Gulf of Alaska, a productive ecosystem hard hit by the 1989 oil spill. The U.S. National Research Council critiqued the core parts of this book, and rated them "excellent." The Gulf of Alaska: Biology and Oceanography is an essential resource guide for scientists, students, and managers working in the Gulf of Alaska. Published with financial support from the Exxon Valdez Trustee Council, the 214-page book sells for $25.
Looking for a bargain? When you buy The Gulf of Alaska book, you can purchase the book Dynamics of the Bering Sea, by T.R. Loughlin and K. Ohtani, for only $20. This is a savings of $20.
Alaska Sea Grant's book The Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands: Region of Wonders, written by Terry Johnson and edited by Kurt Byers, won an Apex 2005 Award of Excellence in the one-of-a-kind government publications category. The Apex Awards for Publication Excellence program is an annual competition sponsored by Communications Concepts, of Springfield, Virginia.