Vol. 29, No. 1
January 2009
Three 2009 Alaska Sea Grant Knauss fellows will start work in their new positions in Washington, D.C., in early February. Mary Bozza will join NOAA Program Planning and Integration, where she will provide in-depth strategic analyses and assessments to NOAA senior management, among other tasks. She also hopes to serve on internal NOAA committees and be involved in interagency efforts related to climate and ocean policy.
Celeste Leroux will help represent the NOAA National Ocean Services National Marine Sanctuaries program to Congress, the White House, the public, and fishermen and locals. She will work with Matt Stout, chief of the communication, outreach and education division of the National Marine Sanctuaries program.
Erin Steiner will work for the NOAA Fisheries Office of Science and Technology as the scientific advisory coordinator. She will work with NOAA marine biologist Laura Oremland and fishery biologist David Detlor.
Seanbob Kelly, 2008 Alaska Knauss fellow, has been hired by NOAA Fisheries Alaska Region. He will start work in Juneau with the Sustainable Fisheries Division in February 2009, where he will work on fisheries management projects with supervisory program manager Sally Bibb.
Knauss fellows work on national resource policy issues in congressional and federal agency offices. The deadline to apply to Alaska Sea Grant for the 2010 fellowship is February 20, 2009; fellowship begins February 2010. See http://seagrant.uaf.edu/research/fellowships.html.
Alaska Sea Grant Education Services manager Kurt Byers is organizing a reunion of a 1989 Alaska Sea Grant Legal Research Team, at Partners in Prevention March 24, 2009, in Anchorage. Former team members will participate in a panel at Partners in Prevention (www.pwsrcac.org/docs/d0048300.pdf), marking the 20th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
Soon after the spill in 1989, Alaska Sea Grant director Ron Dearborn assembled the four-member law faculty team—Zyg Plater, Alison Rieser, Harry Bader, and Ralph Johnson. The team identified a set of legal tools, which eventually led to key law changes that have been credited with preventing major spills in Alaska. Their 213-page Recommendations for an Improved Oil Spill Prevention Regulatory System: Legal Research Report, released in 1989, is available at http://seagrant.uaf.edu/bookstore/pubs/AK-SG-89-02.html.
Plater, Rieser, and Bader will serve on the Partners in Prevention panel, where they will summarize their contributions and the long-term prevention measures that resulted. The panel leader will be Walter Parker, who chaired the Alaska Oil Spill Commission, which relied heavily on the Alaska Sea Grant legal research in its seminal report to Governor Steve Cowper.
The Prince William Sound Regional Citizens’ Advisory Council is sponsoring Partners in Prevention, and the National Sea Grant Law Center will fund the Legal Research Team reunion.
MAP seafood marketing specialist Quentin Fong, and former Cooperative Extension faculty member Tony Gasbarro, facilitated a Kodiak workshop—How to Start a Business in Kodiak—in December, geared to the Hispanic community.
Most immigrant members of the Kodiak community work as carpenters and electricians, and in seafood processing plants, retail, and supermarkets. According to Sister Barbara Harrington, coordinator of the Marian Center in Kodiak, many local immigrants, especially Hispanic women, want to be business owners. Harrington joined with several local organizations and UAF to organize the Spanish-language workshop aimed at helping Hispanic women launch businesses.
The workshop drew twenty-two participants, and in addition four families have scheduled consultations with Fong on starting their businesses—beauty salons, a food kiosk, and a house cleaning business. Fong is also planning to provide train-the-trainers sessions on personal finance for bilingual women in the community.
Alaska Sea Grant is distributing the new video, Trashing Your Livelihood: Marine Debris and Commercial Fishing, which demonstrates that lost and discarded fishing gear, and other marine debris, can be costly to commercial fishermen. The video shows fishery damage, and tells how to reduce the amount of new debris and how to clean up the debris already there.
The video was written and directed by Alaska Marine Safety Education Association director Jerry Dzugan and MAP media specialist Deborah Mercy. It was produced with NOAA funds in partnership with AMSEA and the Marine Conservation Alliance Foundation. The 16 minute DVD is available at shipping cost. Call 1-888-789-0090 for more information.
Alaska Sea Grant staff wrote, designed, and printed the publication Pollock Conservation Cooperative Research Center: Research Summaries 2009, for the School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences. It communicates project results, in lay language, and demonstrates accomplishments of PCCRC and UAF. A long-range goal of PCCRC and this booklet is to educate people about Alaska’s marine environment, and optimally manage marine resources off the coast of Alaska. For a paper copy of the PCCRC report contact Teresa Thompson at teresa@sfos.uaf.edu.
PCCRC was established in 2000 to improve knowledge of the North Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea, through research and education relevant to the commercial fisheries of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands. PCCRC provides grants to faculty and research stipends to graduate students, and supports marine education, technical training, and equipment acquisition.
Alaska Sea Grant Staff is helping UAF promote MESAS fellowships, available to Ph.D. students in the School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, School of Management, College of Liberal Arts, and School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences. MESAS (Marine Ecosystem Sustainability in the Arctic and Subarctic, http://www.sfos.uaf.edu/mesas/) is an interdisciplinary graduate program that trains students in ecosystem approaches to managing and studying living marine resources. Faculty and mentors teach the principles and analytical tools of anthropology, ecology, economics, fisheries science, management, marine policy, and oceanography.
Fellows will be awarded a $30,000 per year stipend for two years, plus tuition, health insurance, and research funding. UAF guarantees a third year of support. Internships and opportunities to mentor undergraduate Native students and invite visiting scholars are also part of the program. Deadline for application for fall 2009 is February 15, 2009.
Heading the UAF MESAS program are faculty members Ginny Eckert and William Smoker, and 20 additional faculty are signed on as well. MESAS is one of over 100 nationwide programs supported by the National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship. IGERT prepares scientists and engineers to address global questions of the future.