Vol. XVII, No. 1
February 1997

Witnesses will be Ronald Dearborn on behalf of the Sea Grant Association, Ron Baird on behalf of NOAA, John Toll on behalf of the National Sea Grant Review Panel, and Leonard Pietrafesa on behalf of the Board on Oceans and Atmosphere of NASULGC (National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges).

Sea Grant Week '97
Ron Dearborn, president of the Sea Grant Association, is organizing the 1997 Sea Grant Week meeting, to be held in Madison, WI, August 10-13. Sea Grant Week '97 will be at Monona Terrace, a new convention center designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, now under construction. Sea Grant Week is a biennial gathering for Sea Grant directors and other staff and affiliates. The 1997 meeting will feature presentations on the most effective Sea Grant research, education, and outreach efforts in seafood technology and ecosystem issues, and will also include group meetings and planning sessions. Sea Grant Week '97 will commemorate Sea Grant's 30-year anniversary.

Nuisance Species in Prince William Sound?
The risk of aquatic nuisance species invading Prince William Sound is the topic for a workshop sponsored by the Prince William Sound Regional Citizens' Advisory Council and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The workshop will be held March 25, 1997, 9-4:30, in the Captain Cook Hotel in Anchorage. Speakers include Robert Benda, RCAC; James Carlton, Williams College, CT; Anson Hines, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, MD; and Allegra Cangelosi, Northeast/Midwest Institute, Washington, DC. To register, call Joel Kopp at RCAC (907) 835-5957 by Feb. 28. Registration is free.

It is widely believed that most invasions of aquatic nuisance species around the world have been via ballast water carried by large vessels for stability. In any 2-hour period, 3,000 species of living organisms are being transported around the world in ship ballast tanks. While most of those species die in the receiving ports, a small number can cause major ecosystem disruption, as they have in San Francisco Bay, the Great Lakes, Chesapeake Bay, Australia, and the Black Sea.

The Port of Valdez receives about 20 million metric tons of tanker ballast water annually. Little is known about what species are arriving in tanker ballast water, what species could survive in Prince William Sound, what species can survive in the dirty ballast water and the ballast water treatment facility, and what impact survivors would have.

To help answer these questions, the RCAC, in conjunction with USFWS is (1) forming a nonindigenous species working group of more than a dozen industry, agency, and public stakeholders; (2) enlisting the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center to conduct a pilot study of the risk of invasion in PWS; and (3) conducting the aquatic nuisance species workshop as an educational and planning forum.

Fisheries Scholarship
Alaska Sea Grant has joined with the National Fisheries Institute, the nation's largest seafood processing organization, to initiate an annual scholarships for deserving students.

NFI created the scholarship through a $50,000 donation from former NFI chair John G. Peterson. Each year the investment earnings will generate half the student stipend. If the scholarship is awarded to a University of Alaska student, Alaska Sea Grant will contribute the other half.

Allison Barnes is the first recipient of the new scholarship. An SFOS master's student studying fisheries oceanography, Barnes is comparing bycatch rates in the Alaska groundfish fishery to environmental conditions such as sea temperature, depth, and light. The goal of her study is to determine if bycatch can be reduced by more precisely targeting marketable fish. Barnes is currently on leave from the National Marine Fisheries Service observer program, to pursue her graduate degree.

Sea Grant Publication
Fishing Vessel Insurance: How Much Is Enough?, by Terry Johnson, is an 8-page article with key information for boat operators about marine insurance policies. It addresses the four types of vessel insurance: hull and machinery, breach of warranty, cargo, and protection and indemnity (P&I). The information is useful nationwide--three Sea Grant programs bought into the press run (Oregon, Texas, and Georgia). Author Terry Johnson is SFOS associate professor of fisheries, Marine Advisory agent, and fisherman. The publication is available at the Sea Grant office (907) 474-6707, single copies free, multiple copies 28 cents each.

Sea Grant Web Sites
Visit Alaska Sea Grant's new web pages at http://seagrant.uaf.edu/. A new publications catalog has been added to the site, which shows over 100 items. Most publications are for sale; some are free. Images of the covers and posters are accompanied by short descriptions about each publication. Each has its own page, so it can be linked to, for example, the web site of a Marine Advisory agent who wrote the publication. Similar link connections are made throughout the Sea Grant site and SFOS web sites. Research activities and a staff directory also have been added to the Alaska Sea Grant web site.

Changes to the National Sea Grant Program web pages include the addition of Sea Grant's Guide to Coastal Science Experts, in a searchable format. The guide is on the Sea Grant media center site at: http://www.seagrantnews.org.

Radio Stories
Arctic Science Journeys recently produced radio stories on (1) the nomadic snowy owl of the Arctic, and (2) the remembrance of Saint Innocence, Russian Orthodox priest John Veniaminoff.

Arctic Science Journeys is broadcast every week on 24 Alaska public and commercial stations, on Earthwatch Radio, and on the Voice of America radio network. ASJ radio provides stories about science, culture, and the environment of the Arctic, and often features University of Alaska research. It is a production of the Alaska Sea Grant Program and UAF University Relations.

Recreational Boating Safety
A safety book for recreational boaters will be published by Alaska Sea Grant in the next few years. The book will be similar to the best-seller Beating the Odds on the North Pacific: A Guide to Fishing Safety, edited by Sue Jensen. As partners in the project, the U.S. Marine Safety Association and the Alaska Marine Safety Education Association will provide expertise, review, and guidance on the new book. Sue Jensen will write the text. The audience for the recreational boating safety book will be recreational boaters nationwide.

New Software
Washington Sea Grant researcher Gordon Swartzman has developed software for fisheries scientists and managers to help them set fishing policy and quotas. The program, called Fish Ideas, could be very useful for managers who must correlate location-specific information from many sources. For example, a fisheries manager can compare age data from scientific surveys with ocean salinity and depth to show that young cod are more common in the shallows and need to be protected there. The program can also be used to analyze water chemistry and to conduct other types of oceanographic studies. Swartzman is a professor at the University of Washington's Applied Physics Lab and School of Fisheries.

Fishlines is a monthly in-house newsletter reporting Alaska Sea Grant activities to staff, students, and principal investigators of Alaska Sea Grant and the Marine Advisory Program, and staff of the School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences. For more information contact Sue Keller, (907) 474-6703.