The council held its annual board meeting in Valdez during the first week of May. Among other business, new board officers were elected for the year.
The 2014-2015 executive committee includes:
• President: Amanda Bauer, representing the City of Valdez
• Vice President: Thane Miller, representing Prince William Sound Aquaculture Corporation
• Treasurer: Jim Herbert, from the City of Seward
• Secretary: Cathy Hart, representing the Alaska Wilderness Recreation and Tourism Association
Volunteer Spotlight
On March 23, 1989, Prince William Sound fisherman Gordon Scott didn’t know a thing about oil spills, and if you had asked him that day, he probably wouldn’t have been too interested.
“I was in Anchorage selling shrimp when the Exxon Valdez hit the rocks.”
On Friday morning, March 24, he saw the headlines about the spill. He didn’t fish near Bligh Reef, so at first he wasn’t worried. On his rounds delivering shrimp, however, all the customers he talked to were asking if this would affect him. Would he still be able to keep fishing for shrimp?
“Of course,” he told them, “this isn’t going to affect me! I’m a fisherman, that’s an oil spill, it’s a tanker.”
Sarah Allan, newest member of the council’s Scientific Advisory Committee, known as SAC, has been fascinated by science and the natural world from a young age.
Allan was born and raised in the tiny Southeast Alaska community of Thorne Bay on Prince of Wales Island.
“I was always interested in science from a really young age, my folks were both high school science teachers, so I was exposed to a lot of science,” she says. “There’s a mentality that lends itself to science, that wanting to know the why and how of things.”
“Understanding the why and how actually makes things that much more interesting and fascinating.”
Volunteer Spotlight:
John Kennish, chair of the council’s Scientific Advisory Committee, also known as SAC, found his life’s calling early.
“I knew I’d be a chemist in the 11th grade when my teacher told us how scientists first figured out the composition of water,” Kennish said. “What excited me was how you could take indirect evidence and use your own sense of logic to draw conclusions about what was really occurring.”
“I thought that was awesome.”