Deana Crouser is a contracted Zooplankton Ecologist with Lynker Technologies, supporting NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, WA. She specializes in zooplankton imaging using AI and machine learning. Her current research focuses on the effects of global warming on long-term changes in copepod size in the Bering Sea.
Originally from Miami, Florida, Deana moved to the Pacific Northwest seeking a new beginning. Initially uncertain about her path in Chemical Engineering, she took a chance on a National Science Foundation Internship. There, she researched the effects of low oxygen concentrations on zooplankton in Puget Sound. It was during this internship that she found her footing in the world of science and developed a passion for advocating for “the little guys.” She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Biological Oceanography from the University of Washington in 2019.
Deana is also a proud American Fisheries Society Climate Ambassador. Over two years, she participated in this science communication program, honing her skills to address the impacts of climate change on aquatic environments. Making science accessible is extremely important to Deana. She loves speaking about her ecosystem and is thrilled to share her perspective on this year’s theme, “Shifting Boundaries, New Horizons.”

Talk: Navigating Change: From Microscopic Plankton to Majestic North Pacific Right Whales

Time: Nov 01,1:00 pm -1:45 pm

Related Publications: Article Publication

Elizabeth (Ebett) Siddon is a Fisheries Biologist at NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Juneau. Ebett grew up in New Hampshire and attended the University of New Hampshire for her undergraduate degree (in Marine and Freshwater Biology). She moved to Juneau in 2002 where she has since completed a Masters (spending lots of time diving in nearshore kelp beds) and PhD (studying climate effects on fisheries in the Bering Sea) at UAF’s College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences. Ebett leads NOAA’s Ecosystem Status Report for the Eastern Bering Sea that provides real-time information on climate variability, ecosystem status, and potential impacts to Alaska’s fisheries to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. Ebett is very committed to education and community engagement in Juneau and beyond. She is part of the Juneau STEAM Coalition, a community partnership between local STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) professionals and teachers in the Juneau School District. Each summer, she co-teaches an undergraduate field course at the Shoals Marine Laboratory off the coast of Maine. In her presentation, Ebett will discuss recent examples of climate impacts to fisheries across Alaska.

Talk: How Alaska's Fisheries (and Science!) are Keeping Pace with a Changing Climate

Time: Nov 01,2:00 pm -2:45 pm

Related Publications: Article Publication Publication Publication

Lori Quakenbush has been the Arctic Marine Mammal Program Leader for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Fairbanks since 2001. She has studied marine mammals (and birds) in Alaska since 1983. Research projects include the use of satellite telemetry to study movements and habitat use of seals, walruses, bowhead, and beluga whales; tissue collections from the Alaska Native subsistence harvest to study population status and health of seals and walruses; and the use of environmental DNA collected from polar bear tracks in snow to identify individual bears. DNA methods are also being evaluated for identifying prey in the stomachs of seals and beluga whales (currently prey is identified from hard parts). Many projects include a Traditional Knowledge component to bring important indigenous knowledge and science together. These projects are conducted with Alaska Native hunters as partners in research. In addition to Alaska Native hunters, Lori is assisted by a team of four biologists, a technician, and a college intern that work for the program in Fairbanks. Lori has authored or co-authored more than 83 scientific papers on Alaska’s marine birds and mammals and tries to peer-review as many manuscripts as possible to support the publication of marine mammal research.

Talk: Are marine mammals in Arctic Alaska responding to warmer waters and less sea ice?

Time: Nov 01,12:00 pm

Related Publications: Publication

Donna D.W. Hauser, Ph.D., is a Research Associate Professor at the International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks where she pursues interdisciplinary and collaborative research in marine ecology. Her diverse research portfolio is centered on the roles and responses of marine wildlife, but also the people who rely on them, in rapidly changing Arctic marine ecosystems. Dr. Hauser increasingly works at the social-ecological interface through partnerships with Tribal organizations and Indigenous coastal communities across northern Alaska to examine intersecting issues of recent sea ice loss affecting marine mammal habitat, changing access and availability of traditional marine resources for Indigenous hunters, and opportunities to elevate community-driven research partnerships to track and respond to Arctic environmental change. She is the science lead for the long-term and community-based Alaska Arctic Observatory & Knowledge Hub (AAOKH), working to bridge Indigenous and Scientific Knowledge to understand the causes and consequences of sea ice loss in coastal Arctic Alaska.

Talk: Nunaaqqit Savaqatigivlugich - Working with Iñupiaq Communities to understand a changing Arctic | Donna Hauser, Roberta G.T.B., & Kim Pikok

Time: Nov 02,1:00 pm -1:45 pm

Related Publications: Article Publication

Roberta Tuurraq Glenn-Borade is AAOKH’s Project Coordinator and Community Liaison. She is Iñupiaq and was born and raised in Utqiaġvik. Roberta got her B.S. and M.S. in Geography at UAF with a focus on community-based monitoring in Alaska. Roberta helps AAOKH develop and maintain strong relationships with our communities so that our data and observations can be as useful as possible.

Talk: Nunaaqqit Savaqatigivlugich - Working with Iñupiaq Communities to understand a changing Arctic | Donna Hauser, Roberta G.T.B., & Kim Pikok

Time: Nov 02,1:00 pm -1:45 pm

My name is Kimberly Kivvaq Pikok and I am an Iñupiaq fisher from Utqiaġvik, Alaska. I am the granddaughter of Tommy Nipik and Rhoda Kivvaq Pikok. I come from a fishing family that loves to spend time inland hunting and camping. I enjoy camping and fishing at Pikok Camp, learning about Arctic vegetation, and traveling to different places to learn about different communities, ecology, wildlife, and culture. I graduated from the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) in 2021 with a Bachelor of Science in wildlife biology and I am now a graduate student at UAF in the Interdisciplinary Studies researching Utqiaġvik’s seasonal changes in spring whaling by centering local hunter and whaler observations and knowledge from the Alaska Arctic Observatory and Knowledge Hub database (AAOKH), conducting interviews, and using community-based research methods. During my time at UAF, being a graduate student researcher for AAOKH, spending time camping and hunting, and interning at the North Slope Borough Department of Wildlife Management, I learned how important it is to have and center Indigenous people and youth in all aspects of research and in the decision-making process. I am always full of excitement, laughter, and smiles especially if I can teach people about camping, Arctic plants and animals, and Indigenous-led research.

Talk: Nunaaqqit Savaqatigivlugich - Working with Iñupiaq Communities to understand a changing Arctic | Donna Hauser, Roberta G.T.B., & Kim Pikok

Time: Nov 02,1:00 pm -1:45 pm

Kari Lanphier has called Sheetkʼá Ḵwáan on Lingít Aaní home since 2017. She works with Tribal Environmental Programs throughout Southeast Alaska to help address pressing environmental concerns such as paralytic shellfish toxins, ocean acidification, and European green crab.

Talk: Mean & Green (or not!) European Green Crab in Southeast Alaska

Time: Nov 02,2:00 pm -2:45 pm

Related Publications: Article Article

Marie Zahn is a polar marine ecologist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory’s Polar Science Center. Her passion for the outdoors and experience in remote regions like Antarctica and Alaska inspired her to pursue a career in marine biology, focusing on the polar regions most impacted by climate change.

Marie holds a BA in Environmental Biology from Columbia University and a PhD in Aquatic and Fishery Sciences from the University of Washington. She specializes in using passive acoustics and oceanography to study marine mammals and their interactions with rapidly changing high-latitude ecosystems. Her PhD research centered on beluga and narwhal echolocation in West Greenland, and her current work involves using high-resolution ocean models to study sea ice dynamics. Her broader research interests include marine mammal bioacoustics, glacier ecology, and the connections between top predator ecology and physical processes in the marine environment.

Talk: Tracking the Tusk: Using Sound to Study Narwhal Movements

Time: Nov 02,3:00 pm -3:45 pm

Related Publications: Article Article

Richard Glenn served on the leadership team of the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation (ASRC), where he was Lands Manager, Senior Vice-President of Lands, and Executive Vice-President of Government and External Affairs (2000-2021). He was an elected At-Large director of ASRC for most of that time. Prior to that he was a North Slope Borough department director (1990-2000) and worked for multiple NSB Borough Mayors as a department director (Barrow Gas Fields and Energy Managment Departments). Richard was a geologist for his Alaska Native regional and village corporation subsidiaries (1985-1990) and has a variety of experience in river and sea ice research, oil, gas and mineral exploration and development projects, and permafrost to name a few.

For many years Richard directed his volunteer efforts at bringing visiting Western researchers and local Inupiat subject matter experts together to share and pursue a common knowledge of the Arctic environment. His academic research at UAF was in geologic mapping of the Brooks Range (Master of Science) and studying the physical properties of sea ice (PhD “all but dissertation”). While at UAF (1985-1991), Richard had various professional internships and scientific side jobs and was appointed the first president of the UAF chapter of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES).

In Utqiagvik (Barrow), Richard served as crew member and co-captain of his extended family’s subsistence whaling crew, performed in one of Utqiagvik’s Inupiaq dance/drum groups, and even had a musical side job playing keyboards in a local band.

Richard served as chairman of the Ilisagvik College Board of Trustees, on the North Slope Borough Planning Commission and on numerous other local, state and federal boards, most related to arctic education and research issues. He served on the Polar Research Board and was twice appointed by the US President to the United States Arctic Research Commission. Richard has a bachelor’s (1985) and master’s degree (1991) in geology. In 2020, Richard was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Alaska Fairbanks for his contributions to the advancement of arctic science and engineering.

Richard is married to Vera Lincoln, with a blended family of nine daughters and four grandchildren, and lives in the hills behind Ester, Alaska.

Talk: In Support of the Coming Generations: Lessons Learned and Lessons Taught from Subsistence Hunting and Whaling Communities on the North Slope

Time: Nov 03,1:00 pm -1:45 pm

Related Publications: Publication

Lee Kayotuk is a hunter who is originally from Aklavik, Canada and for 29 years has called Kaktovik, Alaska his home. He serves on the North Slope Borough Federal Subsistence Management Committee, the Porcu pine Caribou Board, and the NSB Planning Commission.

Talk: In Support of the Coming Generations: Lessons Learned and Lessons Taught from Subsistence Hunting and Whaling Communities on the North Slope

Time: Nov 03,1:00 pm -1:45 pm

Dr. Peter Westley: A life-long Alaskan from Western European ancestry with an B.S., M.S in Fishery and Aquatic Sciences from the University of Washington, and Ph.D. in Biology from Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada. Currently teaching a 100-level introductory fisheries course, an upper division and graduate level fish ecology course, and a 300-level asynchronous online course about the relationships between salmon and people in Alaska and beyond. He has served on the Marine Fishes Specialist Subcommittee of COSEWIC (Canada), a reviewer for the Washington State Academy of Sciences, the Hatchery Scientific Review Group, and the Science Panel of the Alaska Hatchery Research Program (a joint project between management agencies, academia, and aquaculture industry). Currently, Peter is associate professor, Wakefield Chair of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, and PI of the Salmonid Evolutionary Ecology and Conservation Lab at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (seec-lab.com) where he and his students use ‘natural experiments’ represented by climate change, biological invasion and colonization, and hatchery and wild fish interactions to explore fundamental questions with applied importance for sustaining the connections between salmon, people, and place. He is also co-PI of NSF/NRT Tamamta, a graduate training program dedicated to the elevation of Indigenous Knowledge to its proper place alongside western science with the goal of transforming fisheries and ocean sciences together. He lives with his wife Donna and son Finn on the traditional homelands of the lower Tanana dene’ people who have walked these grounds and been in relation with salmon for 11,000+ years.

Talk: Alaska Salmon in a Warming World: From too hot to just warm enough

Time: Nov 01,12:00 pm

Related Publications: Publication Publication Publication Article

John Moran is a research fisheries biologist at NOAA’s Auke Bay Laboratories in Juneau, Alaska. He received a M.S. from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in fisheries and completed his undergraduate studies in zoology and marine biology at the University of New Hampshire. John has worked across Alaska (Southeast, Kodiak, Bristol Bay, Prince William Sound, and the North Slope) studying fish, birds, and mammals. He is currently focusing his efforts on the impacts of recovering humpback whale populations on Pacific herring and the effects of whale watching on humpback whales.

Talk: Following the arc of humans’ relationship with marine mammals in Southeast Alaska

Time: Nov 03,3:00 pm -3:45 pm

Related Publications: Publication Article Publication

Lifelong Alaska resident. Sitka Tribe member, Chairman Indigenous Peoples Council for Marine Mammals (ipcomm), Trustee Sealaska Heritage Institute, AOOS Board of directors. Previous positions: North Pacific Research Board, Alaska Scientific Review Group, Sitka Tribal Council, SEARHC Board, numerous Ocean policy and research committees/forums for 25 years.

Talk: Following the arc of humans’ relationship with marine mammals in Southeast Alaska

Time: Nov 03,3:00 pm -3:45 pm

Lauren was born and raised in Sitka, in Southeast Alaska. She attended Brandeis University in Boston, Massachusetts, where she graduated with a B.A. in International and Global Studies, and a minor in Mathematics. During a study abroad semester in Madagascar, Lauren became interested in marine science and whale research, so she began volunteering for Jan Straley, a professor of Biology and whale researcher at the UAS Sitka Campus. In 2009 she returned to Southeast Alaska and was hired by Professor Straley as a research technician on the Southeast Alaska Sperm Whale Avoidance Project (SEASWAP), a collaborative project of fishermen, scientists, and fisheries managers working to better understand sperm whale interactions with commercial longline fishing vessels. With SEASWAP Lauren worked in acoustics, tagging, population dynamics, and diet analysis. She obtained a master’s degree in Marine Mammal Science at the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland. SEASWAP also introduced her to the world of marine mammal and fisheries interactions in Alaska, and she became fascinated with the cultural and conservation importance of this field. She went back to school and received her Ph.D. in Fisheries from the University of Alaska Fairbanks College of Fisheries & Ocean Sciences, graduating in 2020. She is currently an Assistant Professor with the Fisheries Technology program at the University of Alaska Southeast, Sitka Campus, where she also conducts research on humpback whales and gray whales in the Gulf of Alaska, specifically focusing on interactions with fisheries resources. In her free time, Lauren can be found hiking, camping, fishing, hunting, boating, playing music with family, friends, and her dog Nysa.

Talk: Following the arc of humans’ relationship with marine mammals in Southeast Alaska

Time: Nov 03,3:00 pm -3:45 pm

Related Publications: Publication