RJ Kopchak testifies at Senate Hearing

PWSSC Development Director RJ Kopchak spoke to the U.S. Senate committee on Environment and Public Works about S.3305, The Big Oil Bailout Prevention Liability Act of 2010. Listen to the archived webcast.

Summer Camp

The Education Staff has been hard at work preparing for Summer Camp. You can read all about it at the NEW PWSSC Education Blog with news, photos, student work, and stories to keep you up to date on our activities and programs.

New Scholarships Available

With the oil spill in the Gulf raising awareness of the vulnerability of our coastal and marine environments, the Prince William Sound Science Center in Cordova, Alaska is offering a timely summer program for high school students focused on understanding ocean science and cultivating stewardship of ocean resources. The Ocean Science and Leadership Expedition (OSLE) is a 10-day summer intensive learning experience for high school students. Working with local marine scientists and educators, participants will learn about—and experience firsthand—oceanographic principles and issues such as oil spills, marine debris, and climate change.
We invite students from the Gulf Coast to visit Alaska to share their experiences of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill with peers from Alaska and throughout the U.S. To assist families who may not otherwise afford such an opportunity, the Science Center is offering two full scholarships of up to $1500 for high school students from Gulf States to attend the course. The scholarships will cover full tuition and up to $400 in travel expenses. The scholarship application deadline is July 1, 2010. Full Details (.pdf)

Notorious Dawgsharks Video

The Notorious Dawgsharks expanded the video they made for their research presentation at the Tsunami Bowl in Seward, and entered it in the EPA Faces of the Grassroots: Environmental Justice video contest. Their video is a finalist in the student informational video category! Check out their Video
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCNt-e21QB0
Contest website: http://www.epa.gov/compliance/environmentaljustice/events/video-contest.html

Education Programs

The school year is winding down and the Education staff is busy with final activities. On April 5th the SYCAMORE took a group of students from Cordova High School on the 3rd annual Marine Biology Cruise in Simpson Bay. Also in April the sixth graders took the ROVs they had built in Discover Room to the Harbour for a popcorn spill. The final events are the field trips for Shorebird Festival then it is time for Summer Camp.

On March 24th, 1989 the Exxon Valdez oil tanker grounded on Bligh Reef spilling over 11 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound. Last week Tawna Morgan of PWSSC and Dave Janka of Auklet Charter Services visited Northwest Bay on Eleanor Island to take pictures of the oil still contaminating the beach.

Summer Camp!

Sign up now for the 2010 Ocean Science and Leadership Expedition
Working with local marine scientists and educators, students will participate in hands on, science based activities that increase their knowledge of coastal and marine ecosystems.
The course includes a 4-day sea kayaking expedition in eastern Prince William Sound led by experienced outdoor educators.
Download the brochure (pdf)

Check out our other programs for Summer 2010

Release - Researchers look for reasons limiting the success of juvenile herring recruitment

Juvenile herring are the focus of a four-year, $6.8 million research program approved this week by the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council. Cordova’s Prince William Sound Science Center (PWSSC) will coordinate the investigations to measure factors that may limit the success of herring recruitment including oceanographic conditions, food availability, disease, overwinter energetics of juvenile herring, and predation.

Other researchers participating in this effort are from the National Marine Fisheries Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of South Alabama, Flying Fish, Ltd. and the Prince William Sound Oil Spill Recovery Institute. The program also incorporates community involvement and will include contracts to commercial fishermen for some of the sampling activities.
Read the full release(pdf)

Save the date for 11th annual Copper River Nouveau - Saturday June 12, 2010
Chef Brett Knipmeyer from Anchorage's Kinley's Restaurant & Bar (http://www.kinleysrestaurant.com/index.html) will be our guest chef.
This annual fundraiser event for the Prince William Sound Science Center includes a five-course, gourmet meal, featuring Copper River Salmon and carefully matched fine wines. A silent and live auction and lively entertainment makes this an event you don't want to miss!

Release - Weather Station Installed at Cape St. Elias

By ROB CAMPBELL

Oceanographer, Prince William Sound Science Center.
A newly installed weather station at Cape St. Elias is now providing mariners and aviators with better weather information in the Kayak Island area. The station was installed on July 16th by Joe Banta of the Prince William Sound Regional Citizens’ Advisory Council, and Rob Campbell of the Prince William Sound Science Center, with help from the Cordova Coast Guard air station.

The weather station was designed by Micro Specialties Inc. of Wasilla, and measures wind speed and direction, temperature, relative humidity, barometric pressure and solar radiation. The station reports hourly via a satellite link, and the data is then made available on the web at: http://denali.micro-specialties.com/CapeStElias. The station was purchased by the citizens’ council following an incident where a Tesoro tanker was damaged by high winds and seas.

Read the Full Release

Sound Predictions 2009 Field Experiment

Follow the experiment via dispatches from the field at the Sound Prediction 2009 blog.

The Alaska Ocean Observing System (AOOS) and the Prince William Sound Oil Spill Recovery Institute (OSRI) are sponsoring a model validation experiment to evaluate regional forecast models for their effectiveness in predicting wind, waves and ocean circulation in Prince William Sound. Included in this evaluation are the WRF atmospheric and ROMS ocean circulation models, the SWAN wave model and the SAROPS search and rescue trajectory model.
The field component of this experiment will run from July 19 – August 2. Surface currents will be mapped using satellite tracked drifters and HF radar. Subsurface currents will be determined from drifters with drogues at 1, 9 and 40 meters and also from the acoustic current measurement at the mid-Sound buoy. Water properties and some biological data will be measured using traditional ship-based sampling and also autonomous underwater vehicles that swim and fly through the Sound on programmed courses. Three vessels -- two from Cordova (Auklet and Alena K) and one from Valdez (Vixen) -- will provide the base of operations for deployment of the drifters and data collection.
Read the full release (pdf)
Get more information on the experiment
See a timeline

Science Center Celebrates 20 Years

The Science Center was incorporated the twenty-second of April, 1989, with the goal of establishing an independent, community-based research and education center in an abandonded ice house at the entrance of Cordova Harbor. Since that time we've worked hard to better understand the complex ecosystems of Prince William Sound, the Copper River and the northern Gulf of Alaska. A generation of Cordova school children have enjoyed learning about their "backyard" through the Discovery Room, Summer Camps, and Secondary Education Programs. And their parents have had to chance to continue to learn about the region through our Community Education Programs that allow PWSSC staff and other visiting scientists to share their research with the community.

The Spring edition of the Science Center Newlsetter, Breakwater, is now available. This is our special 20th Anniversary Edition that looks back to how the Science Center started. Inside you will also find information about the Port Gravina Listening Line, the sixth grader's ROV project, and a look at the upcoming summer activities.

Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Brochure

Click here to download your own copy of our Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Brochure. Copying of this publication is permitted. Please note, this brochure was designed to be printed on 8.5 x 14 paper and folded in half twice to have a total of 4 double-sided panels. If possible, when printing on 8.5 x 14 paper, do NOT scale to page size.

You can find more information about Oil Spills on our Education page.

Release

Kopchak joins as Development Director
January 27, 2009
The Prince William Sound Science Center is pleased to announce that R.J. Kopchak joined its staff as Development Director January 1, 2009.

Kopchak was one of five incorporators of the non-profit research and education center which was founded in 1989 and is located in Cordova. He served as the first board chairman and president, and helped secure initial funding for the Center’s operations.

“R.J. is passionate about continuing the development of local capacity for scientific understanding,” said Nancy Bird, President of the Science Center. “He recognizes the importance of science including local knowledge in order to better manage our rapidly changing ecosystems. He’s excited to be back on our team as we begin building our third decade of providing science and environmental education services to the region and state.”

Read the Full Release

Announcement

Field Notes is a radio program produced by Allen Marquette, Education Specialist for the Prince William Sound Science Center, and hosted on Valdez's radio station, KCHU. An archive of past Field Notes programs are now available on our website in mp3 format.

The Alaska Oil Spill Curriculum, updated 2007, is now available for use in schools. Download the entire curriculum or individual sections from the Prince William Sound Regional Citizen's Advisory Council (PWSRCAC). The Curriculum is designed for grades K-3 (pdf/2.4MB), grades 4-6 (pdf/9.7MB), and grades 7-12 (pdf/11.2MB).

Research programs of the Prince William Sound Science Center focus primarily on understanding patterns of ecosystem change. We live in a dynamic world, and these changes have accelerated in the last 100 years. Human population growth and climate change are key manifestations of broad scale influences to which we must understand and adapt. Likewise, marine and terrestrial ecosystems will reflect changes on varying scales in space and time. As the Center moves into the next five year period of its program life (2007-2012) it presents here a refreshed strategic and science plan to guide its continuing efforts to develop understanding, predictive models, and other applications of ecosystem change which support the economies and communities of Prince William Sound and its greater regions.

The Prince William Sound Science Center and Ecotrust are partners in developing a comprehensive Geographic Information Systems (GIS) program to serve the Copper River watershed and Prince William Sound regions in Alaska and have just hired a new GIS Analyst, Stephanie Waite, for this program. Stephanie will further develop the Copper River Knowledge System, an information system designed to help local citizens, conservationists and resource managers to better understand the Copper River Watershed in which they live and work. The purpose of CRKS is to facilitate the exchange of information about the natural and human resources of this region. Currently, the Copper River Knowledge System website is available at: http://www.ecotrust.org/copperriver/crks_cd/welcome.htm

Students review lessons learned since 1989 oil spill

They say what you don’t know can’t hurt you, but a group of four Alaska high school students set out to disprove that. Winners of an essay contest in which they discussed how their families were affected by the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, their reward was the chance to participate in a field trip around Prince William Sound to learn about the spill and lingering oil. Under a motto of “Learning from the past, for the future” they took the lessons they learned about the social and biological effects of the oil spill to educate their peers and others in Cordova and, also, Washington, DC. Read the complete release here.

See the video on YouTube.

The Prince William Sound 2004 Lagrangian Field Experiment This 125-page report describes a two-week drifter buoy field experiment conducted in central Prince William Sound (PWS) in August 2004. During the 2004 Lagrangian Field Experiment, 10 surface drifters and 10 drifters drogued at 10 meters were released from a central point in the Sound. They were then tracked, telemetered and modeled in near real-time from a base station at the Prince William Sound Science Center in Cordova. The results were compared to several ocean circulation and oil spill trajectory models. The final report describes the methods and results and includes numerous figures and drifter trajectories. (note: this is a large file – approx. 23 MB; you may also request a CD copy of the report to be mailed by contacting pwssc@pwssc.org)