Volunteer Spotlight

On the way out the door on her last day before she retired from 23 years on the council’s staff, Linda Robinson turned in her application to volunteer on the Information and Education Committee, the group she helped re-form in 2008. Today’s committee has roots in an “education committee” which existed in the early days of the council, but was later dissolved.

“Over the 23 years I worked for the council, I’ve watched volunteers dedicating a lot of time and passion to the mission of the council and I feel like it’s my turn to do that too.”

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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.”

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Volunteer Spotlight

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.”

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