Vol. 28, No. 2
February 2008
Unalaska MAP agent Reid Brewer has been helping a fim crew and local residents prepare for a Discovery Channel "Dirty Jobs" television show on cleaning the carcass of a humpback whale stranded last September. As a local team of six residents, including Brewer, prepares to tackle the putrid whale carcass, he is organizing boats for transportation, serving as local liaison for the Ounalashka Corporation and Qawalangin Tribe, and providing the right wording in proposals that pitch the film to the Discovery Channel.
The goal is to clean the flesh off the bones, bleach them, rearticulate the whale skeleton, and hang it in a local hotel as a remembrance to the animal. At present the whale is unfrozen, partly in the water, located across the bay from Unalaska, 45 minutes away by boat.
A small budget will pay for some logistics, knife-sharpening, and protective disposable rain suits and rubber gloves for the skeleton cleaners. The filming will take place in late February. Before it is aired, NOAA will give final approval of the film.
Seanbob Kelly, Alaska Sea Grant Knauss Fellow for 2008, reports the inside story on last December's fellowship placement week in Washington, D.C. The routine for the week, according to Kelly, was host presentations and interviews during the day, and host-fellow pub visits in the evening, the latter playing the key role in placement of the new fellows. Kelly described the host agency competition at the bars for the attention of the new fellows as "extreme," with twice as many hosts as fellows. This was the opportunity for agencies such as DOT (Marine Transport), FEMA, NASA, NOAA, NSF, State Department, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to land a much-sought-after Knauss Fellow for 2008.
After 18 interviews, Kelly chose to work with NOAA, NMFS Sustainable Fisheries, Domestic Fisheries Division and Fisheries Management Program. He will help implement the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act reauthorization, take part in congressional hearings, and interact with regional management councils. In addition to securing a good position for him, Kelly said his experiences during placement week "unlocked the door to many new friendships." To read more about placement week, see Kelly's new blog site or go to his profile page.
Applications for the 2009 Knauss Marine Policy fellowships are due in the Alaska Sea Grant Office February 29, 2008. The internship program provides students a year of experience on a congressional staff or with an executive branch agency working on marine issues. To find out more, or to apply for the fellowship, see http://seagrant.uaf.edu/research/knauss/knauss-application.html.
On March 18–19, 2008, the North Aleutian Basin Energy-Fisheries steering committee will present a workshop to inform citizens, the seafood and oil industries, and others, on the potential impact each stakeholder group might have on the other if oil development were to proceed. Session topics include oil and gas potential, environmental concerns, fishing in Bristol Bay, lease sale permitting, and decision analysis protocol. Also covered will be potentially impacted communities, Native subsistence, and Cook Inlet experiences with oil and gas development. For more information on the workshop, go to http://seagrant.uaf.edu/conferences/2008/energy-fisheries/agenda.html.
While Alaska Sea Grant is organizing the workshop, the program does not take a position on whether to develop energy resources in the North Aleutian Basin. Alaska Sea Grant's policy is to remain impartial while delivering unbiased information to Alaska residents, stakeholders, and policy makers.
Alaska newspaper columnist and fisheries radio show producer, Laine Welch, named Alaska Sea Grant efforts in her Top Ten 2007 "Fish Picks." As reported in the January 6 Alaska Journal of Commerce, for most promising fish story Welch selected the Alaska king crab enhancement project (AKCRRAB), which aims to revitalize stocks around Kodiak and St. Paul islands. For best fish partnership, she lauded ADFG, UAA/UAF, and Alaska Sea Grant MAP for efforts to recruit young Alaskans into fishery science and management careers.
National Sea Grant will institute a new program review process. For all programs, 2009 will be year 1 of a four-year review cycle. Each of the 31 Sea Grant programs will have a 1.5-day site visit in 2011–2012, when they will be evaluated on institutional setting, management, and user connections. In 2013, reviewers will look at content for all 31 programs, and compare programs using annual reports from each of the four years as a basis for the evaluation.
Brian Allee presented a report to the Alaska Marine Ecosystem Forum, on the Alaska Regional Marine Research Plan project last month. With the goal of prioritizing the most important marine research objectives in the Aleutians region, stakeholders are being interviewed in Aleutian communities, 30 surveys were submitted by attendees at the Alaska Marine Research Symposium, and a Web survey has been posted. Opinions from these and other sources will be ranked using the Analytical Hierarchy process, and will become part of a fall 2008 report. The National Sea Grant Program funds the project, part of a nationwide marine research priority initiative.
As an incentive to submit research priorities at the Alaska Marine Research Symposium last month in Anchorage, Kurt Byers offered a drawing for $100 worth of Alaska Sea Grant books and videos. The winner was Janet Duffy-Anderson, fisheries biologist at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle.
The Western Alaska Interdisciplinary Science Conference and Forum 2008 will be held in Dillingham, April 4–7. The theme of the conference, organized by the UAF Bristol Bay Campus, is Weathering Change, Monitoring Uncertainty. See http://www.uaf.edu/waisc/.
For the Alaska Marine Science Symposium, Alaska Sea Grant contributed $500 toward two student poster awards, in addition to $500 for cosponsorship of the conference. The students who received awards for their research posters are Joel Webb, Ph.D. student of Ginny Eckert and Gordon Kruse; and Lisa Kamin, M.S. student of Tony Gharrett.
The Fishery Industrial Technology Center is offering a two-year scholarship for a master's student in fisheries or seafood sciences. The student will work with Ray RaLonde and Alexandra Oliveira, evaluating biochemical properties and physical condition of Pacific oysters from the Alaska Molluscan Broodstock Program grow-out site in Kachemak Bay (Alaska) for qualities as a half-shell product. The project is funded by Alaska Sea Grant. For more information contact Dr. Oliveira at ffamo@uaf.edu.