animatedcollapse.addDiv('A', 'fade=1') animatedcollapse.ontoggle=function($, divobj, state){ //fires each time a DIV is expanded/contracted //$: Access to jQuery //divobj: DOM reference to DIV being expanded/ collapsed. Use "divobj.id" to get its ID //state: "block" or "none", depending on state } animatedcollapse.init() animatedcollapse.addDiv('B', 'fade=1') animatedcollapse.ontoggle=function($, divobj, state){ //fires each time a DIV is expanded/contracted //$: Access to jQuery //divobj: DOM reference to DIV being expanded/ collapsed. Use "divobj.id" to get its ID //state: "block" or "none", depending on state } animatedcollapse.init()         Check back here for updates about the ongoing work from the team at Gulf Watch Alaska! This page is your source for news, announcements and data pertaining to each of the long term monitoring projects. GOOD NEWS! From the Lingering Oil team: • 25 years after EVOS, harlequin ducks and sea otters are no longer being exposed to lingering oil in Prince William Sound! Click the image below to see how other species have fared since 1989. Gulf of Alaska Data Portal Click the image below to visit the Gulf Watch Alaska webpage that allows you access to an interactive data page where you can browse data sets, access project descriptions, and project data onto a map allowing you to graphically explore individual or multiple layers of data! Text goes here!         Who is watching the Gulf?      

History Concept The concept of the Alaska SeaLife Center began over 25 years ago, with the initial vision by Seward community leaders to enhance the existing University of Alaska's Seward Marine Center research facilities. Members of both the local and scientific communities identified a need and expressed their support for an expanded research and public education facility in Seward. The concept remained a dream for years with periodic efforts to lobby the University and the Alaska Legislature for funding. Exxon Valdez Oil Spill (EVOS) On March 24, 1989, the supertanker Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound, damaging nearly 1,500 miles of Alaska's pristine shoreline and causing widespread harm to the region's wildlife, economy, and ecosystems. Thousands of marine birds, mammals, and fish were destroyed in the days and weeks following the spill. The Exxon Valdez disaster drew dramatic attention to the need for improved facilities to treat injured wildlife, as well as to enhance Alaska's collective research infrastructure. In particular, the disaster brought to light the lack of reliable baseline information on the affected animals and their habitat before the spill. This greatly hindered the capability of scientists to understand the extent of damages and the recovery process. In light of the potential long-term effects of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, scientists identified a need to establish the capability to conduct research and monitoring on a long-term basis. Formation of SAAMS In February 1990, responding to the needs brought to light by EVOS, a group of concerned citizens and researchers formed the Seward Association for the Advancement of Marine Science (SAAMS), a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation for "educational, social, and cultural purposes including marine research, public education, and providing education and scientific programs." The goal of SAAMS is to create a world-class marine research, wildlife rehabilitation, and public education institution adjacent to the existing University of Alaska Seward Marine Center on Resurrection Bay in Seward, Alaska. That goal advanced by the completion of the Alaska SeaLife Center in 1998. Capital Funding In 1993, the Alaska Legislature appropriated $12.5 million from the EVOS criminal settlement funds as a state grant to the City of Seward to develop the Alaska SeaLife Center as a "marine mammal rehabilitation center and as a center for education and research related to the natural resources injured by EVOS." The City of Seward entered into an agreement under which SAAMS agreed to assume all obligations and responsibilities of the City with respect to administering the State Grant. Following receipt of the first installment of the State Grant funds, SAAMS requested additional funding from the EVOS Trustee Council, the governing body for the EVOS Civil Settlement funds. In November 1994, the Trustee Council authorized $24.956 million to support the development of research facilities at the Center. The Trustee Council subsequently appropriated an additional $1.247 million for a fish pass and research equipment enhancements at the Center. In May 1996, the City of Seward issued $1.75 million in Revenue Bonds to finance $13 million of the cost of constructing the Alaska SeaLife Center. These bonds were retired in March 2001, utilizing a $14 million appropriation to the Center authorized by U.S. Senator Ted Stevens. Finally, a private fundraising campaign raised approximately $6 million for the start-up of the Center. Over $1 million of the campaign was raised within Seward, a town with 3,000 residents. Construction Ground breaking for the Center took place in May 1995. This was followed by Phase I construction which consisted of site preparations, utility relocations, sheet pile cofferdam and breakwater installation, and construction of the seawater intake and outfall reservoirs and lines. The Phase I contract was completed on time in December 1995. Phase II construction commenced in June 1996, and consisted of the main building, life support systems, laboratories, animal habitats, exhibits, and landscaping. Grand Opening occurred on May 2, 1998. Business Model With a mission of bringing visitors in close contact with cutting-edge marine research, the Center’s design includes a public aquarium with exhibit tanks for displaying research animals as well as other North Pacific mammals, birds, fish, and invertebrates. The facility also features a full veterinary suite with quarantine pools for orphaned, diseased, or injured wild animals brought to the Center for rehabilitation, and for resident animals that need medical treatment. Looking to the Future The Alaska SeaLife Center will continue its focus on marine research. As our world, and more specifically the North Pacific, faces dramatic changes caused by environmental factors and human components, the Alaska SeaLife Center will continue to be instrumental in understanding and developing ways to maintain marine ecosystems.

How You Can Help Donate Our Wildlife Response program is mostly funded through private donations. Please consider making an online donation today to support this critical program. Wishlist The patients and their caregivers in the Wildlife Response Program can also be supported by purchasing an item on our Amazon Wishlist. Items in need range from formula for orphaned animals to footwear for the caregivers.  Volunteer Volunteers are key to the success of our Wildlife Response team. The Alaska SeaLife Center has volunteer opportunities to fit a variety of schedules.  

Donate Directly The Alaska SeaLife Center relies on the generous support of people like you as we strive to understand and maintain the integrity of Alaska's marine ecosystems. The Center is the only facility of its kind in Alaska, and we need your help to stay on the cutting edge of marine research, wildlife response, and education. Please consider a donation to the Alaska SeaLife Center as we work together to sustain Alaska's oceans. You can donate directly here or join a Giving Circle for higher level gifts. For more information on supporting Alaska SeaLife Center programs, contact the Development Office at (907) 224-6355 or development@alaskasealife.org.  Pick.Click.Give. Make a Difference using your Alaska PFD  Pick.Click.Give. allows Alaskans to share their Permanent Fund Dividend with causes they care about.  When you go online to apply for your dividend, you will see the Pick.Click.Give. option. Click and follow the instructions to make your donation. The Alaska SeaLife Center encourages and thanks the many Alaskan donors that have supported us in this way.     Investment Accounts We accept donations from several types of investment accounts, including qualified charitable distributions from IRAs and gifts of publicly traded securities such as stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. Please click here for more details and contact information if you would like to explore this opportunity.   Matching Gifts Your donation or volunteer time may be matched by your employer or you may designate a donation to the Alaska SeaLife Center!   Many employers will match your financial gift one-for-one or even two-for-one, providing additional support for the Alaska SeaLife Center. Click here to see if your company sponsors matching gift programs. Sometime these programs even extend to retirees. For additional information on matching gifts, contact the employee benefits office at your place of employment and request a matching gift form from your personnel office. Follow the directions to complete the form and mail the form for processing to:   Alaska SeaLife Center Attn: Development Office – Matching Gifts P.O. Box 1329 Seward, AK 99664-1329   Contact the Development Office at (907) 224-6355 or development@alaskasealife.org with any questions.

ASLC Internship Program Are you looking for an exciting internship opportunity? The Alaska SeaLife Center (ASLC) is sponsoring internship programs for college students or graduates who are interested in gaining a one-of-a-kind experience in a world class marine facility. ASLC internships offer a well-rounded experience in a variety of areas within the Center. Depending on the type of internship, duties may include assisting aquarium, avian, or marine mammal staff with animal husbandry tasks; helping with marine-related research projects, or as support in our education department.  Our Internship Program includes: SUMMER Internships: May through early August FALL Internships: October through December WINTER Internships: January through April   Program Information The internships are unpaid.    Housing is provided.   Participation in the program requires 40 hours per week.   A background check will be conducted on all potential interns.   Interns will be required to sign a contract agreeing to a start and end date.   College credit can be earned but must be arranged by you and your college.   Interns are responsible for their own meals and travel expenses.   ASLC does not sponsor visas for foreign students.     Application Instructions Complete the application for no more than 2 positions. Be sure to provide us with the best e-mail and phone number for contacting you.   If you are applying for 2 internships, you must complete an application for each one.   Upload the required additional information to your application. Cover Letter(s) Resume At least 1 letter of recommendation   Incomplete applications will not be considered. For more information on becoming an intern, please email HR@alaskasealife.org.  Current Internship Openings:   

  animatedcollapse.addDiv('A', 'fade=1') animatedcollapse.ontoggle=function($, divobj, state){ //fires each time a DIV is expanded/contracted //$: Access to jQuery //divobj: DOM reference to DIV being expanded/ collapsed. Use "divobj.id" to get its ID //state: "block" or "none", depending on state } animatedcollapse.init() The Gulf of Alaska is part of the North Pacific and reaches from the Alaska Peninsula in the west to the Alaska archipelago in the southeast.  The coastline includes mountains, glaciers, temperate forests, towns, and cities. Powerful currents in the Gulf of Alaska have helped shape the surrounding land and communities, and circulate necessary nutrients and marine life from the deep waters to the surface. These circulation patterns allow the Gulf of Alaska to thrive with life and sustain some of the largest United States’ fisheries, as well as provide essential habitats for seabirds, marine mammals, and fish to feed and reproduce. As described in Gulf Watch Alaska: Long-term Monitoring, the Gulf of Alaska was impacted by a major oil spill on March 24, 1989. The Exxon Valdez oil tanker ran aground in Prince William Sound, Alaska, and spilled nearly 11 million gallons of oil. An estimated  250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles, up to 22 orcas, and billions of salmon and herring eggs were lost to the spill. Since the spill, scientists have been conducting a long-term ecosystem monitoring study to gain a better understanding of both natural and human-caused impacts to the Gulf of Alaska ecosystem. The Gulf Watch Alaska long-term monitoring program consists of a team of scientists who work together to measure and watch different parts of the ecosystem spill area. Through cooperation in this project, scientists can see the links, or connections, between all of their areas of study. In science, we call this “systems thinking.” Systems thinking looks at the web of relationships where individual pieces respond on their own and together as a whole. An ecosystem like the Gulf of Alaska is not just a collection of individual animals and plants. It is all living things interacting with each other and with the non-living components around them that drive physical and chemical processes and affect the conditions for survival. The process of systems thinking allows the Gulf Watch Alaska team to harness the power of a network of scientists that all specialize in different research subjects. This power makes the team of scientists well-equipped to solve any mysteries unfolding in the Gulf of Alaska. One such mystery arose in 2014 when people across the Pacific West coast began to notice large quantities of dead or dying birds washing up all along the shore from California to Alaska. As this event expanded, scientists began investigating the intricate network of natural processes in the Gulf to try and uncover the mystery of these dying birds. Yosty Storms is a former colleague at Gulf Watch Alaska. She is now working for the Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program in Anchorage. Recently, Yosty has heard a lot of talk regarding the birds washing ashore, as well as other very unusual events happening throughout the Gulf and surrounding land areas. Let’s follow along as Yosty visits with the Gulf Watch Alaska team and investigates these odd occurrences. Watch the video below and meet Yosty! VIDEO: Meet Yosty Storms Meet Yosty Storms and learn about a mystery occurring in the Gulf of Alaska. (1:42) Video Transcript Narrator: Meet Yosty Storms. Yosty works at the Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program in Anchorage. But when she was a student she worked with Gulf Watch Alaska. That's a long-term monitoring program looking at a large range of the North Pacific Ocean, especially the area impacted by a massive oil spill back in 1989. This area has taken a very long time to recover, because some of that oil is lingering on the beaches and offshore. That oil continues to affect the health of fish and other wildlife. Gulf Watch Alaska is a team of amazing scientists who are "on watch" for this ecosystem, keeping tabs on its recovery from the oil spill, and to see if they can detect other sorts of changes – the kinds that might be the result of global climate change. The majority of Alaskans live in communities along the coastline of the Gulf of Alaska, or within the watersheds that drain into it. Some of these communities, like here in Cordova, are dependent on the Gulf of Alaska for their local economy and jobs. Others, like the Native Village of Eyak, have over 10,000 years of history in this region. Everyone at Gulf Watch Alaska agreed that 2014, 2015, and 2016 were very, very unusual years for the ecosystem. So let’s go along with Yosty to see if we can put the mystery together. The first question Yosty wanted to ask some of the scientists was: just how unusual were these years?         Who is watching the Blob?   Archipelago (n): a section of water containing many islands   Cooperation (n): working together to accomplish a goal   Ecosystem (n): a community of living things and nonliving surroundings linked together by energy and nutrient exchange   Essential (adj): something that is necessary or very important   Habitat (n): a place that provides an animal or plant with adequate food, water, shelter, and living space to feed, breed, seek shelter, and raise young   Intricate (adj): very detailed, complex   Lingering (adj): sticking around, lasting for a long time   Sustain (v): strengthen or support physically or mentally   Thrive (v): to be healthy and successful   Watershed (n): an area of land that contains a common set of streams or rivers that all drain into a single larger body of water, such as the ocean    

  animatedcollapse.addDiv('A', 'fade=1') animatedcollapse.ontoggle=function($, divobj, state){ //fires each time a DIV is expanded/contracted //$: Access to jQuery //divobj: DOM reference to DIV being expanded/ collapsed. Use "divobj.id" to get its ID //state: "block" or "none", depending on state } animatedcollapse.init() Talking with Kathy, Yosty learned that the common murres in the Gulf of Alaska were starving during this period of uncharacteristically warm water. This common murre die-off event was very puzzling for scientists because there was not a clear reason as to why the birds were behaving abnormally. If the birds were not getting enough food, there must be something in the Gulf of Alaska impacting the food chain. Scientists study all levels of marine food webs, beginning with the organisms at the base — the plankton. Plankton are a diverse group of living organisms that spend at least part of their life floating through the water column, unable to swim against the current. Plankton consist of both plants and animals and help to form the base of the marine food chain. Every organism that relies on the ocean for food depends on an adequate supply of plankton to keep the ecosystem properly fed. Even animals that don’t eat plankton themselves, like the common murres, require enough healthy plankton to feed the fish and invertebrates that they prey upon. So, if the common murres were starving, causing them to move close to shore and inland to search for food, and dying in large numbers, there might be some evidence that maybe something was different about the amount or types of plankton in the Gulf of Alaska those years. Following this lead, Yosty moves forward in the investigation by questioning Gulf Watch scientist Sonia Batten, who specializes in monitoring plankton populations to understand what had been happening at the base of the Gulf’s food chain that might have been related to the murre die-off. Watch the video below to hear what Sonia has observed with the plankton in the Gulf of Alaska. VIDEO: Sonia Batten and Plankton Sonia Batten describes her observations of plankton in the Gulf of Alaska. (4:17) Video Transcript Narrator: Hmm… It all seemed to go back to the murres’ food chain. Why did these seabirds starve to death? Was something wrong with their food source? Yosty needed to start at the bottom of the food chain. She needed to talk to Sonia Batten, A Gulf Watch scientist monitoring plankton in the Gulf of Alaska. Yosty: Hi Sonia, what evidence do you have that 2014-2015 were unusual times for plankton in the Gulf of Alaska? Sonia: We’ve been looking at plankton in the northern Gulf of Alaska since 2000, so we have quite a long time series now. We look at the plankton from spring through fall of each year. We noticed in 2014 and then again in 2015 that there was something unusual happening, and we were kind of expecting it because we knew that the waters offshore were really warm from the end of 2013 through the next two years (really unusually warm, and it’s been called “the blob” by some people). So we were expecting to see something unusual. What we typically see in the plankton… There are two types of plankton. There’s the plant plankton and those are little tiny single-celled plants that float around and take the sun’s energy to grow – and they typically get blooms of those in the spring because there’s lots more sunlight in the spring, there’s lots of nutrients from the winter storms that have been mixed up, and it starts warming up. All those things are really good for them to grow, so we typically see those take off in the spring. And then as they grow they get eaten by the animal plankton and their numbers die back a little and they run out of nutrients and so on, so there’s lower levels of them through the summer. And then sometimes in the autumn we get another bloom because we get a few storms come in and mix things up again and give them more nutrients. That’s the typical pattern. What we saw in 2014 was we didn’t see anywhere near as many of those plant plankton as normal, and we saw big numbers of very small animal plankton that were around. It was quite unusual – we hadn’t seen anything quite like that in the whole 50 years of sampling that we’ve done. Yosty: What impacts could this have on the rest of the Gulf? Sonia: It’s still a question we’re working on. Plankton support everything in the ocean. All of the fish and mammals either feed on plankton themselves, or they feed on something that’s been eating plankton already. If there’s not so many of one type of plankton that might be bad, but there were quite a lot of animal plankton around so there obviously eating something. They may be eating something that we don’t see… One of the things we saw was that the types of plant plankton were slightly different: there were more of the smaller type of cell that are longer and thinner. Those cells typically do better in years when there’s not so many nutrients around, because they find it’s easier to take the nutrients up. It’s possible that those are not such a good food source for some of the animal plankton, or maybe the animal plankton weren’t finding as much of what they wanted and in turn that could mean that there’s not enough animal plankton for the fish and seabirds and mammals. But we still don’t really know – those kinds of patterns take a long time to be revealed. Yosty: Kathy mentioned something called domoic acid and its potential to impact seabirds. How is this related to the plankton that you’ve been studying? Sonia: Some phytoplankton – that’s the plant plankton – can produce a toxin called domoic acid. They don’t necessarily produce it over time, sometimes they produce it as a response to a stress in their environment. One of those stresses could be being eaten, so they produce it to put off zooplankton from eating them. There were reported instances of domoic acid in Alaska, and actually through a wide area of the North Pacific a lot of places were reporting it. Although the plankton have evolved to deal with the domoic acid that’s produced by the phytoplankton when other animals eat the zooplankton they concentrate the toxin, and as you go up the food chain the poison gets concentrated and it can potentially cause problems in larger animals that never ate plankton themselves but have eaten other organisms that have concentrated it. So it’s one explanation for why some of the seabirds may have been struggling in that year.   Plankton are considered one of the environmental drivers, so they’re the link between what happens in the ocean – in terms of water chemistry, temperature, the water conditions – and the fish, because plankton respond to their environment really quickly, and fish feed on plankton and larger organisms feed on fish, so the plankton are the link between the oceanography and the fish. We know that plankton respond really quickly because they have life cycles that are really short, sometimes even days, but all of them less than a year or at least a year is the longest life cycle. So if changes happen in their environment they respond quite quickly, and you can see that in changes in their numbers, and the types of plankton and where they’re at. So by monitoring them it gives you a really rapid response to a change in the environment. In the early part of the twentieth century in the UK, it was kind of hard to know where to send the fishing boats, you know, where they were going to find the herring, and Alister Hardy invented this instrument that could be towed behind ships, measuring the plankton, and it’s called the continuous plankton recorder. Continuous because, rather than taking a sample as a snapshot across, it continuously samples the plankton as it goes. His idea was that if you could understand the food of the herring, the food of the fish, maybe you could predict where they were going to be and then send the fishing boats there. You would build a map, a bit like a weather map, of where plankton were and when they were, and then you could send the fishers. So that was his idea, back in the early part of the early part of the twentieth century. And it took a few years to get routine, but from the 1930s onwards they were using this instrument to do that – to build up a picture of plankton meteorology, basically.         Who is watching the Blob?   Abnormally (adv): different from what is normal   Diverse (adj): a lot of variety   Invertebrate (n): an organism lacking a backbone   Organism (n): an individual life form   Phytoplankton (n): freely floating, often minute plants that drift with water currents   Productive (adj): producing enough energy to sustain life   Zooplankton (n): freely floating animals that drift with water currents  

John first came to Alaska with the U.S. Coast Guard in 1985 and learned to operate a variety of vessels while servicing aids to navigation along the Gulf of Alaska coast.  After leaving the Coast Guard he earned a Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Alaska Southeast, then a Master of Science degree through the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) while studying seabird ecology in Prince William Sound.  John has been working as a Research Associate at the Alaska SeaLife Center (ASLC) since the summer of 2000.  His research focus is on the behavior and population dynamics of Steller sea lions and nesting seabirds, primarily through the use of remote video monitoring techniques.  He earned a Ph.D. degree from UAF with a dissertation study related to his sea lion research at ASLC.  John also continues to work as a part-time captain and naturalist for the tourist industry based in Seward, Alaska.  Behavior and population dynamics of Alaskan pinnipeds and seabirds Google Scholar

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ASLC in the news Seward, Alaska (January 14, 2016) - KTVA reporter, Heather Hintze, visited the Alaska SeaLife Center and spoke with our Avian Curator, Tasha Dimarzio, and Science Director, Tuula Hollmen to get the latest on efforts to understand what is currently impacting common murres. An unusual number of live murres have been sighted in the region for this time of year. Researchers and the public have also seen an exponentially higher murre die-off than what is typically associated with El Nino years, with thousands of birds washing up on Alaska’s shores.  For the past five years, Hollmen and ASLC staff, working in partnership with National Park Service, have conducted monthly surveys of murres contributing to the baseline knowledge of these highly specialized seabirds. In addition to working with murres and other birds in the ASLC aviary, Dimarzio volunteers for the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey (COASST) helping partners enhance the regional understanding of seabirds.  Hintze’s video and story can be found at http://www.ktva.com/seward-volunteers-tracking-dead-murre-numbers-across-alaska-794/.

It is with a heavy heart that we announce the death of Richard C. Hocking, the Alaska SeaLife Center’s esteemed Aquarium Curator of 24 years. Richard passed away November 21 at his home in Seward at the age of 70. Richard was born in Seattle, Washington on April 16, 1951. His curiosity about the natural world was evident from a young age when he declared his intentions to become a forest ranger. He loved camping and exploring at a little forested lot near the Skykomish River as well as during many family trips throughout his home state of Washington and to various national parks. Richard enjoyed numerous hobbies including reading on a variety of subjects, backpacking, skiing, kayaking, photography, movies, traveling, and scuba diving. Diving in particular became a prominent interest in his life as evidenced by his PADI divemaster certification in 1983. While Richard’s job with the Washington Department of Fish and Game paralleled his childhood dreams of being a forest ranger, his passion for the ocean truly defined his life's work. For over four decades, Richard grew his career in the zoo and aquarium industry. He began his legacy in 1976 with the Seattle Aquarium as an Aquarium Biologist. He worked there up until 1989 when he became employed with the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium as an Animal Care Technician and additionally assisted with diving and collecting operations. His time at Point Defiance ended when he left for Alaska in 1997.  Richard began his career at the Alaska SeaLife Center as the Aquarium Supervisor in 1997, before the building was even finished. He quickly was promoted to Aquarium Curator in 1998, a role he upheld until his passing. While he significantly shaped the aquarium exhibits and led the division at the Center, his management role never stopped him from doing any task; from checking water quality to leading a tour, Richard took part. “Richard was truly an ASLC treasure. Both a teacher and a student, he had a gift for sharing his endless knowledge of marine species and a passion for marine conservation. His contributions to ASLC for the past 24 years can be seen and felt through all of the exhibits,” explains Husbandry Director, Lisa Hartman. Richard was known as one of the most hands-on curators in the building. While his main role was managing a group of aquarists to maintain and display the species in the Center, he immersed himself in many other aspects of ASLC. Richard managed and secured permits that allow the Center to collect and display fish and invertebrates. He was very involved in the long term monitoring of invasive species in Alaskan waters and would often set and check green crab traps and tunicate plates. He not only was in charge of food procurement and inventory management for fish and invertebrates, but for every single species in the facility.   Always looking towards the future, Richard hoped to educate and motivate the next generation of ocean stewards. He found joy in working with youth and became involved in the Center’s after-school program, Ocean Science Club, leading dissections and classes. Richard was also active as a judge and mentor for the Alaska Ocean Science Bowl, an academic competition for teens involved in ocean science. “Richard knew more about the ocean and the creatures in it than anyone I have or more likely ever will meet.  The only thing that he enjoyed more than learning about the world's oceans was teaching others about it.  He got particular joy out of teaching the next generation about the wonders of the sea. I remember fondly how much he loved the time he got to spend as a judge for the Alaska Ocean Sciences Bowl and as a mentor for the Seward Team. Can you think of a better job for Richard than being a judge in an Alaska Ocean Science competition? I can't,” expresses Aquarist, Chuck DiMarzio.  Richard will be remembered for his kindness, infinite knowledge, selfless work, and inspiring conversation. In 2017, his coworkers fittingly designated him as the “Unsung Hero” for making a consistently important contribution to the day to day operations of the Alaska SeaLife Center. “If you know the ASLC, you know the impact and resource of Richard Hocking. He was a purveyor and connoisseur of biology and natural history, just as eager and willing to share with or learn from a first year college intern as he was a professor emeritus. If you knew Richard, you knew he valued people, what each individual may uniquely be able to offer, and great conversation,” recounts Aquarium Manager and Dive Safety Officer, Jared Guthridge.  A public memorial exhibit to celebrate the life of Richard C. Hocking will be open December 8, 2021 at the Alaska SeaLife Center from 3:30 PM to 6:30 PM. The life, work, and stories of Richard will be displayed throughout the Center and the public can tour at their own pace. A more formal outdoor memorial service is being planned for Spring 2022.

Legacy Society Your Legacy is Our Future  You can be a part of the Alaska SeaLife Center's critical work by leaving a gift through your estate plans. A planned gift allows you to support our mission after your lifetime so future generations can enjoy the bounty of Alaska's oceans. Anyone, regardless of age or financial status, can create a legacy gift to the Alaska SeaLife Center. How to Make a Planned Gift A planned gift can be as simple as naming the Alaska SeaLife Center in your will or designating the Center as a beneficiary on your retirement plan or life insurance policy. The Alaska SeaLife Center Endowment Fund, established through the Alaska Community Foundation, enables additional options for planned gifts through the Foundation's unique expertise.  Sample language to use when making a planned gift to the Alaska SeaLife Center Endowment Fund:   “I bequeath __________________________________ (describe dollar amount, property to be given, or proportion of your residuary estate) to The Alaska Community Foundation (EIN# 92-0155067), a tax exempt organization under IRS Section 501(c)(3), to be added to the Alaska SeaLife Center Endowment Fund, a component fund of The Alaska Community Foundation, and I direct that this bequest become part of this fund.”  Benefits of Planned Giving When you notify us about your gift, we will enroll you in the Alaska SeaLife Center Legacy Society. You will receive invitations to special events and be recognized in our annual report and e-newsletters, unless you choose to remain anonymous. All communications you have with our staff about planned giving is strictly confidential.      We are grateful to those who support the Alaska SeaLife Center through planned giving. Through your gift, you are ensuring that future generations will learn about and care for Alaska's oceans. To learn more about how to enroll, please contact our Development Office at 907-224-6396 or development@alaskasealife.org or download the brochure.      

    You are seeing a livestream of what ASLC scientists are seeing right now on the Chiswell Island Steller sea lion rookery. ASLC scientists have been monitoring the behavior and population dynamics of the Endangered Steller sea lions in the Gulf of Alaska since 1998.   Are the cameras not live? When the signal is unavailable during observation hours (9 AM - 6 PM AK time) or non-observation hours (6 PM - 9 AM AK time), we will play previously recorded footage until the livestream is restored. The success of the remote-operated camera system is determined by many unpredictable factors, including consistent wind and solar energy to fuel the batteries.   About the Chiswell Island Steller sea lion remote video monitoring project:  The ASLC Remote Video Monitoring Team collects data every year by remotely controlling cameras in the Gulf of Alaska from an office at the Alaska SeaLife Center. The data that has been collected has taught us not just about these amazing marine mammals, but about the entire ecosystem that they live in. This livestream is for scientific and educational purposes and will contain unpredictable moments from the wild that may be graphic for some viewers. Examples of these moments could include births, males defending territories, pup mortality, predation, and more. Activities permitted by: USFWS Land Use Permit, NMFS Permit No. 22293   Watch weekly highlight videos from the research team: Our Chiswell Island Research Team shares weekly video updates from the observation season, check out the playlist to see incredible moments from this season: YouTube: @AlaskaSeaLifeCenter Facebook: @AlaskaSeaLifeCenter Instagram: @AlaskaSeaLifeCenter   Be a supporter of this critical long term monitoring research and help us continue this project for years to come! Select "Science & Research Programs" in the pull down menu.    

Local Information Seward is located at Mile 0 of the Seward Highway, 125 miles south of Anchorage. Located at the head of Resurrection Bay, Seward is the gateway to Kenai Fjords National Park, with Chugach National Forest and Caines Head State Recreation Area nearby. The city offers many recreational activities, including day wildlife viewing cruises, kayaking, fishing, and hiking.    Seward is accessible year-round by road or by train and cruise ship during the summer season. Local Links Seward Chamber of Commerce   City of Seward    City Campgrounds & Parks    Visit Anchorage

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Spring Break 2026 Availability  March 7-14: 1:45 pm Daily Spring 2026 Availability  March 15 - May 31: 1:45 pm Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays Summer 2026 Availability  June 1 - August 3: 1:45 pm Daily August 4 - September 30: 1:45 pm Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays   Duration: Approximately 30-minute tour Maximum of 5 people per tour - ages 10+* Come behind the scenes for a unique experience with one of our marine mammal ambassadors! This tour will allow visitors to get an up-close view of the exceptional day-to-day care our seals or sea lions receive while learning about how these amazing species are specially adapted for Arctic and sub-Arctic environments. Each encounter will be unique (and special!).   No photography allowed on this tour. One Group Per Tour Group Size of 1-2 Guests: $289.95 Group Size of 3 Guests: $339.95 Group Size of 4 Guests: $389.95 Group Size of 5 Guests: $439.95 Members get a 20% discount, buy your membership today and use the benefits immediately. (does not include admission) *Guests aged 10-16 must be accompanied by a paying adult Tickets only valid for date selected. Online tickets must be purchased at least one day in advance.     

Starting July 23 Summer 2020 Availability - Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays & Sundays: 3:30 pm  Duration: Approximately 30-minute tour Maximum of 5 people per tour - minimum age 13* Meet Mara, our resident Steller sea lion mom and her pup, born June 26 on this once-in-a-lifetime exclusive tour.   Have a chance to feed Mara and watch her interact with her new pup. Learn from our marine mammal staff what it takes to be a good Steller sea lion mom and what it was like welcoming the pup into the world. Don't miss this first time offered interaction that will be available for a very limited time. For the safety and well-being of our animal residents there is no photography allowed on this tour. Flat-Rate Price: $399.95 per group of 1-5 people - members get a 20% discount, buy your membership today and use the benefits immediately *Guests under 16 must be accompanied by a paying adult Tickets only valid for date selected. Tickets must be purchased at least one hour in advance. All guests must wear a face covering on this tour. If you cannot wear a face covering due to a medical condition, please email onlinesales@alaskasealife.org to arrange an accommodation before booking the tour.

Meet Mara's new pup! We are so excited to announce ASLC's newest family member! Mara recently had her baby on June 26th and weighing in at 40lbs. Both mom and pup are healthy and strong. Stay tuned for the gender reveal!

  animatedcollapse.addDiv('A', 'fade=1') animatedcollapse.ontoggle=function($, divobj, state){ //fires each time a DIV is expanded/contracted //$: Access to jQuery //divobj: DOM reference to DIV being expanded/ collapsed. Use "divobj.id" to get its ID //state: "block" or "none", depending on state } animatedcollapse.init() Meet Dr. Kathy Kuletz Wildlife Biologist, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Kathy's role in Gulf Watch Alaska: Pelagic Ecosystems Co-Principal Investigator, Prince William Sound Marine Bird Population Trends Important skills for her position: "Biometric and GIS skills are of course important for working in science, but writing and communication skills are more important for me now, at this stage in my career. And of course, getting outdoors when possible, to recharge interest and enthusiasm, even get new ideas." Challenges in her work: "Obtaining the support needed for a scientific project, especially something long-term, takes an enormous amount of time and effort - and is usually not why one goes into science. But it has to be done... these aren't the fun aspects of science, but they also help you to refine your goals, objectives, and approach." Kathy's advice to young people interested in science: "Get some field experience, and even work on several types of studies to see what really stokes your interest in learning more. Often, biologists start out as volunteers (I did) and move to seasonal field work, or help with data and reports. When you're on a project, do some background searching and reading on the subject or your specific project (so easy to do these days), and find out what questions the project leader is focused on. If you do a good job, work well in difficult conditions, and stay in contact, chances are you'll be called back." Dr. Kathy Kuletz describes her career as a seabird biologist. (3:14) Video Transcript I’ve always been interested in the working with wildlife. I grew up in the desert, so the ocean was exotic to me. Anything that had to do with the ocean was very exotic, and that’s probably what attracted me to that aspect. I wanted to see Alaska, so I came up for a summer job like most people here. I worked in fisheries to begin with because that’s where a lot of the jobs were – there’s not a lot of funding to study birds. I was doing fisheries work, but then I wound up getting a summer job on Naked Island in Prince William Sound, and that was my first job with seabirds. My one year there turned into four, which turned into my Master’s degree studying pigeon guillemots there. Of course that was before the oil spill – I started back there in 1978. After the oil spill, it turned out that was one of the few places where we had some baseline data on seabirds – how they raised their chicks, what they fed on, and how many birds there actually were in these colonies. I went back after the oil spill, again as a seasonal employee of Fish & Wildlife Service, and eventually it became a term appointment. I stayed on in prince William Sound studying marbled murrelets. I became interested in what was going on at sea. Back in the 70s and 80s there was a large ecosystem study going on because they were looking at oil lease sales in the Bering Sea and the Gulf. They had what they called the OCSEAP program – the Outer Continental Shelf Environmental Assessment program. Then there was a huge gap where not much was done out at sea, and of course seabirds spend most of their lives out at sea, but mostly people study what goes on at a colony. I was interested in that other aspect of their lives and what happened the other three quarters of their lives out at sea. For the most part, this was before we had little tiny satellite tags and GPS dataloggers, but we didn’t know what they really did. We didn’t have a good idea of where birds went, and a large part of what we found out was by counting birds at sea – going out on big ships, research vessels that were doing fisheries work or oceanographic work, and doing surveys in conjunction with those. That’s what we’ve continued to do, of course we have more technology now and we can log location of every sighting very accurately and tie that data into what the oceanographers found on the same cruise, or the plankton people, the fish people, the marine mammal folks. So we’re trying to identify the hot spots, trying to found out where birds go in the non-breeding season as well as during the breeding season offshore. That’s what’s attracted me – the idea of being able to put together all this information and understand the big mystery of what seabirds do out at sea, that’s what draws me into it.   Who is watching the Blob?    

 

    animatedcollapse.addDiv('A', 'fade=1') animatedcollapse.ontoggle=function($, divobj, state){ //fires each time a DIV is expanded/contracted //$: Access to jQuery //divobj: DOM reference to DIV being expanded/ collapsed. Use "divobj.id" to get its ID //state: "block" or "none", depending on state } animatedcollapse.init() Meet Seth Danielson, Ph.D. Research Associate Professor, University of Alaska Fairbanks Seth's role in Gulf Watch Alaska: Environmental Drivers Co-Principal Investigator, Gulf of Alaska Mooring (GAK1) Important skills for his position: In my position it is important to be able to write clearly and to be proficient at computer programming. Programming skills allow one to perform customized analyses that will extract new information from a dataset, while writing skills are needed to communicate your results and demonstrate the importance of your work. Challenges in his work: "Sometimes the biggest challenge is in properly crafting a scientific hypothesis that is both tractable and cost-effective. There are often very expensive ways to find answers to a research problem but these may not be affordable. Half the fun of doing research is finding the right balance between costs, effort, and scientific results." Seth's advice to young people interested in science: "A solid background in mathematics, statistics and critical thinking provides a springboard that can direct you into any of the sciences that interest you. Set yourself up for success by learning how to both identify and solve problems." Seth Danielson describes his interest in oceanographic research. (1:16) Video Transcript My name is Seth Danielson; I’m a Research Associate Professor of Oceanography at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. As a research professor, I’m really interested in firstly understanding how the world works and going out and making new discoveries about how the ocean system responds to the atmosphere: how it provides an environment that the fish and the birds and the whales are living in in the marine system, and how the physics – the winds, the waves, the currents, the temperature of the ocean – how all those affect the ecosystem as they come together. Along the way I get to go to these beautiful places, remote places that very few people get to see on the ocean and along the coasts around the Arctic and around Alaska. I get to bring my stories back to schools and share those with the students, and that’s a lot of fun and very fulfilling. The ability for us to be able to learn new things about the world and communicate them is just incredibly satisfying – it makes a great career.   Who is watching the Blob?