Make a Date to View the new Ken Burns Parks Documentary

Last Thursday night at the Attwood Theater in Anchorage, I had the rare privilege to participate (as Howard Ferren would describe) in a conversation about conservation between a legendary film maker/historian and more than 1,000 members of Alaska's extended conservation community. The privilege was three part: part magic hearing how a 10 year film project idea became a reality - I am always fascinated how producers, authors and others scope and then deliver on an idea that is as complex as national parks. Part fascination, hearing how America's parks evolved in both the 19th and 20th centuries - the interplay between social values of different eras and the challenges of setting aside land and water for non consumptive use was especially insightful. Part celebration - seeing great cinematography and hearing (from Burns and many in the audience) about how parks have shaped their lives reminds us that we have inherited a truly magnificent gift.

The excerpts that Burns previewed for us whetted my appetite for more - his story telling skills are legend and this series does not disappoint. This series comprises stories from the perspective of some 50 individuals - explorers, rangers, scientists, naturalists, bureaucrats, politicians and others lost in the annals of history but who accomplished extraordinary things! There are, of course, the grand stories about the big accomplishments and yet Burns also manages to weave in the back story and sub-plots, including a fascinating piece on Seward told in the words of people we know!

I just love a good story well told... in this series Ken Burns has produced one of the most delightful stories I have ever seen told about the relationship between humans and nature. He and co-producer Dayton Duncan (both pictured above receiving honorary ranger appointments) deserve a place up there with Thoreau, Muir, Leopold and others who have have provoked us to think about that relationship and why it is important to our future.

http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/

Bookmark this site and then clear your calendar for an evening with friends and family on 27th September, 2009 to see the premiere of the 6 part series.

2009 US Climate Change Report - A Must Read!

In the United States, the Global Change Research Act (GCRA) of 1990 mandates that every 4 years an assessment of the impacts of global change in the U.S. be conducted by the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) which represents the work of many agencies and experts. Between 2004 and 2009, the Climate Change Science program (CCSP), which incorporated the USGCRP, produced a series 21 studies culminating in today’s release by the White House of the 2009 Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States report which provides unequivocal scientific data regarding the impacts climate change is projected to have, and is already having, on our communities, ecosystems and wildlife.

You can access a copy of the report at: http://www.globalchange.gov/publications/reports/scientific-assessments/us-impacts/download-the-report.

Dr Jane Lubchenco, under-secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded today’s White House press briefing on the report by stating: “Climate change is happening now, it’s happening in our own backyards, and it affects the kinds of things people care about."

The report is easy to read and has several chapters of particular relevance to Alaska and the work that we do at the Alaska SeaLife Center, viz:

Excerpt from the Alaska Chapter:
“Over the past 50 years, Alaska has warmed at more than twice the rate of the rest of the United States’ average. Its annual average temperature has increased 3.4°F, while winters have warmed even more, by 6.3°F.

Over much of the past decade, as air and water temperatures rose, sea ice in this region declined sharply. Populations of fish, seabirds, seals, walruses, and other species depend on plankton blooms that are regulated by the extent and location of the ice edge in spring. As the sea ice retreats, the location, timing, and species composition of the plankton blooms changes, reducing the amount of food reaching the living things on the ocean floor. This radically changes the species composition and populations of fish and other marine life forms, with significant repercussions for fisheries”

Next steps – our Response
This report has reaffirmed the strategic importance of our work on climate change research and education and will be a central plank in the formulation of our 2020 strategic plan next year as well as our immediate research, education, conservation and strandings program priorities in 2010. No issue is more important to the future of Alaska’s marine ecosystems nor to the future of the people who depend on them.

I encourage all staff to:
a. take the time to read the report – if nothing else, read the Alaska Chapter so that you can share the findings with friends and visitors and be informed about the data we will be using to make resource allocation and other strategic decisions in the next year; and
b. discuss how this knowledge impacts your work and how we might better contribute to both climate change mitigation and adaptation – I’ll likely convene a town hall meeting to discuss your ideas and recommendations in the fall.

Please don’t hesitate to post your ideas here or set up a time to chat with me if you’d like to discuss further what we might do to address this unprecedented global challenge.

Ian

To See Alaska as Others Do

My wife, son and I had the privilege last week to enjoy a week off doing something I never really thought that we would ever do... take a cruise to Alaska. Somehow, a cruise vacation is not something we have ever thought about doing - most of our vacations tend to involve family or just 'doing our own thing'.

This year we decided to combine my need for a relaxing week away from work with a chance to enjoy a family vacation and, along the way, satisfy our innate curiousity about how the cruise ship industry works in Alaska. The experience was truly worth the investment.

We joined a Royal Caribbean Cruise Ship (Radiance of the Seas) that traveled from Vancouver to Seward and stopped along the way in Ketchikan, Skagway, Juneau and Hoonah.

Highlights included:

1. spending quality time together doing fun things - ships are great spaces to hang out and the Radiance offered a seemingly endless array of recreation, dining, relaxation and entertainment choices - I did not imagine that I would ever rockclimb 13 stories above the ocean in the middle of the Gulf of Alaska then participate in a 3 on 3 basketball tournament below the rock climb and then head downstairs for a gourmet meal all in the space of 2 hours and then not have to worry about driving back to a hotel!- such is the wonderful self-contained unreality of cruising!

2. just being at sea - there is no substitute for spending time on the water, even if that means being a little higher above the waterline than most of our usual sailing trips! We saw sea lions, whales and an amazing diversity of marine life at close quarters in parts of the Gulf that are very hard to access any other way!

3. seeing SE Alaska - I had not been to several of the towns/villages we visited and was very impressed with the way they are set up to deal with tourism. I was even able to see places I had been to previously (such as Juneau) in a completely different light! Hoonah is particularly impressive - a refurbished salmon cannery is now the core of a day trip destination that has a major focus on cultural and natural area tourism. The photo below shows some of the great architectural detailing that I believe we could learn (and benefit) from here in Seward.

Hoonah serves as a great example of how impacts of mass tourism can be limited and local communities really benefit from self-regulated tourism even at relatively large scales. The community only allows one ship per day and controls tourist access and activities carefully, but with a great emphasis on presenting local Tlingit culture and history and providing employment and business opportunities that range from guided nature walks such as the bear viewing trip to the world's longest zip line (featured below in photos). Both are truly world class experiences.

If there was one disappointment on the cruise it was my observation that we "under-interpret" what Alaska has to offer. Nearly everyone I talked with on the ship (not a true random sample, but good enough given I was on vacation!) anticipated this trip as a life highlight. I was reminded of the appeal and power of Alaska as a destination by an elderly couple from Texas who has saved for this trip as their major retirement activity. Despite mobility limits, they tried to undertake every activity that would bring them into contact with the places and cultures and history that they had grown up reading about in adventure books for 60 years! Their enthusiastic participation was mirrored by the hundreds who attended free on board hisitory lectures and who clung to outdoor audio posts to hear recorded stories about glaciers and whales! Most passengers seemed to have a seemingly insatiable appetite for knowledge that is presented by real people telling real stories - they want to know what they are seeing and what it means and why it matters and they want that information in real time. As the photo below indicates, there were numerous opportunities for passengers to be exposed to some really cool (excuse the pun!) Alaskan experiences - this photo is of an early morning visit to the Hubbard Glacier.

Unfortunately without a trained naturalist on board this ship ( a common challenge I gather), there were few opportunities for Alaska's natural and cultural heritage to be presented in ways that satisfied the curiosity of visitors.

Those of you who know about my background in interpretation can imagine the wheels that turned in my mind throughout the trip, rethinking how we might better meet the interests of passengers such as the Texan couple. I suspect that one of the reasons why our visitors like the SeaLife center experience is because of our emphasis on personalized interpretation. Based on my cruise experience, I will now be working even more closely with our marketing, education/interpretation and other staff and partners in the Alaskan marine tourism industry to ensure that the SeaLife Center plays a key role presenting Alaska's marine ecosystems in ways that meet the needs and interests of Alaska's million + cruise ship guests. I am also planning to work on new ways to engage with the cruise ship industry to help ensure we provide direct outreach to tourists and support for marine educators across the Gulf of Alaska.

I'd welcome your thoughts on what more can and should do to ensure that every visitor to Alaska leaves here with a proper understanding and renewed appreciation of the amazing marine ecosystems that are such a big part of an Alaskan cruise ship experience.

Work-Life Balance

We lead increasingly rich and complex lives. That is a good and bad thing from an evolutionary perspective. The "good" part bundles better health care with things like amazing technology and convenience to access any part of the globe at a fraction of historic travel costs. The "bad" makes unprecedented demands on us 24/7/365 and makes it increasingly hard for us to commit our most precious resource (time) efficiently and equitably to meet family, personal, work, fitness and other social demands.

As I have moved around the world, it has been fascinating to learn how different cultures and religions view leisure and then to overlay that with both the different work organization systems that prevail and with the increasing demands for productivity gains - multi-tasking has become a shorthand for doing more in less time!

I think perhaps the most balanced work-life system I ever worked in was in Indonesia in the early 90s when I was seconded to a University to develop the national marine conservation curriculum. We were required to be at work 6 days/week, starting at 0700 in the morning, but finishing around 2pm. There was an obligatory afternoon nap (it was the tropics!) and then time for G+Ts and cards or other diversions in the evening. Fridays were even simpler - the morning was for sport and then the folks would head to the mosque at noon and then go home. Saturdays were a kind of compensation day for Friday's lack of output! Working that relaxed cycle I managed to write 32 papers or reports that year - my highest ever rate of written output...

An annual survey in the Economist magazine ranks and then evaluates different countries use of leisure time. Typically European countries rank highly on the amount of holidays available. However, many articles point out the productivity trade offs that such long vacation entails and these serve to further entrench the belief that somehow work is good and leisure is not. There is clearly a view in many modern economies that working longer and longer hours is meritorous and that in tough times such as we now face, we all need to work harder to get us out of the current economic mess. With the recent loss of retirement wealth, I regularly hear people talking about having to work until they are 70+ in order to be able to afford to retire! Yikes!

Increasingly people prefer to not distinguish between work and leisure - for many (and I think that now includes me), there is a big overlap betwen how I like to spend my time and how it might be "accounted for" -- work and leisure are clearly somewhat simplistic descriptions of how we use time! That overlap is attenuated by increasingly similar "platforms" for leisure and work - e.g. volunteering is now a more common "leisure activity". Similarly, there has been an explosion of research into internet psychology with many researchers noting that desoite the increasing problems of "videophilia" there are many benefits of internet use as a diversion from work! !

However you choose to spend your "leisure" or (perhaps more accurately) non- ASLC work time, I encourage all staff to be mindful of the importance of finding a balance that enables you to refresh your mind, recharge your batteries and renew your relationships outside work.

Simple things like using a full week of leave as leave from work and so not checking on email or voicemail, taking public holidays off to be with your family or even just taking a few hours off as leave to go for a walk on a sunny day can go a long way towards sustaining your long term health and happiness in the workplace and outside of work.

I'm increasingly "practicing what I preach" and so am heading off for a week (at the end of next week) with my family to enjoy the spring and scenery via boat - for the first time in many years, I won't have email or cell access! I have also asked all my direct reports to work on reducing excess leave carry forward and take time to talk with their staff about how to better balance work and life interests.

I encourage you to share your thoughts and sugestions on how to better balance your work and life outside of the SeaLife Center- what works well for you, what don't you recommend, what tips do you have for colleagues new to working at the Center?

Belugas = Big Wild Life

I don't know about you, but for me, being able to see wildlife in a natural setting is an important part of my quality of life. Alaskan wildlife is, for the most part, still so abundant and widely distributed that even living near a big city like Anchorage I can easily see animals that I could not have dreamt of seeing when we lived in Bethesda, MD. As the marketing slogan (http://www.bigwildlife.net/) says so well... Anchorage really does equate with big wild life!

For most residents, and especially at this time of the year when many animals are again active, most folks think of wild land animals like bear, moose and wolves. I have a fascination with them also, but what really grabbed my attention when we moved here from Maryland three years ago were the reports in various tourism pamphlets about the possibility of seeing Cook Inlet belugas around Anchorage. I have always been intrigued by whales of all species, and had been involved in stranded pilot whale recues off Tasmania and in various whale management initiatives on the Great Barrier Reef and in Indonesia. But I had only ever seen live belugas in the Mystic aquarium so was keen to get out and see them 'in the wild'.

As if on cue, the very first time we drove along Turnagain arm, we were fortunate enough to count 26 whales in 3 groups (near the pylons a few miles before Girdwood). Their agility and grace in the water was mesmerizing. I was hooked!

Watching for belugas has now become a compelling (and perhaps even obsessive) part of my drive betwen Anchorage and Seward. I couldn't wait for the ice to melt fast enough this past winter and was rewarded with my first view of a solitary beluga just a week ago - again near Girdwood. I am looking forward to helping out again this summer with the citizen beluga watch program at Ship Creek when my schedule permits.

That background may explain why I have followed the Cook Inlet beluga endangered species listing process with such interest. As a relative newcomer to the complex and politicized process of endangered species listing and management, I am struck by the need for both (a) greater public education and more targeted research to understand not only why Cook Inlet belugas are threatened, (and (b) also what steps we might take to sustain and then ultimately help the population to recover.

The SeaLife center has an active (although not widely known) beluga research program that we are hoping to build out in the years ahead as much of what we can learn from Cook Inlet may be applicable to other declining whale populations. We are reaching out to management agencies in local and State government, industry and other non-profit and research organizations to undertake and contribute to research to answer key unresolved issues such as why are Cook Inlet belugas so slow to recover from stress and what are the key threats to them and their habitat?

Clearly a healthy beluga population in Cook Inlet is a good measure of the health of the inlet. This charismatic species may also be a measure of public support for sound ocean management generally and so we'll be undertaking some social values research over the next few months to see what role we can play in public education about Cook Inlet belugas.

Stay tuned!

Learning from a Legend: a Drive to Seward with Gov. Walter Hickel

Today (May 1st) is the celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Statehood in Alaska. It is fantastic that Seward has put this event together and is a timely reminder of the historical significance of Seward to the State of Alaska.
As a small contribution to that event, we have been helping the committee with organization of VIP tours and even with the logistics of shuttling VIPs and invited guests around Seward. And so yesterday I was more than happy to change my hat and drive former two times Governor of Alaska, Walter Hickel and his lovely wife Ermalee down to Seward.
As many times as I drive the Seward Highway I will never forget the stories that the Governor told on that journey and the observations about how much has changed on that journey over the past 60 years. He told me that he arrived in Seward in October 1940 from Kansas, via California and after borrowing $10 for food and a train fare (which he gave back with a $10 tip the next year!) he made his way up to Anchorage where he began his amazing career in construction and politics. An interesting sideline was that if he could have secured a passport he would have gone to Australia instead of Alaska, but Australia's loss is surely Alaska's gain!
During his early career, he built many links with Seward - his company built many of the houses on the city fringe. That affinity strengthened when, as Governor in the mid 1960s, he established the Seward Skill Center (now AVTECH).
But perhaps his greatest contribution to Seward was his unflinching support for the Alaska Sealife Center. In his second term as Governor of Alaska in the early 1990s he fought tooth and nail against critics in the Department of Interior to ensure that the SeaLife Center funding could be secured. He believed that the Center would ultimately play a key role in recovery and enhancement of affected systems and communities after the Exxon Valdez oil spill and that marine research was a key need to enable both processes to happen. Fortunately for Alaska, his views prevailed!

It was one of my most treasured moments since becoming CEO of the Center to see his clear delight in learning just how productive our research programs have been over the past decade. Even though he is a frequent visitor to the Center, he treats every visit as a unique learning experience and continually wants to know more about how our work can contribute to management of the Arctic and the ocean commons generally; subjects that he has an unparalleled passion for and on which he continues to campaign actively.
As a small token of appreciaton for the extraordinary support for our work and in keeping with his quest for knowledge I will make sure we keep Governor Hickel informed of our work and encourage all of us to keep striving to fulfil his vision for the Center.
As he constantly reminds us - "ideas are far more powerful than money".

Spring has Sprung!

Don't you just love spring?! Clear sunny skies, long daylight hours and a warm sun really do change your view of the magnificent scenery of South Central Alaska. Sure winter can be wonderful... soft snow blanketing the mountains and occasional blue skies, but the short days and freezing ice and snow storms challenge us more than we care to admit!

I have the privilege of driving the most scenic highway I have ever traveled anywhere in the world at least twice a week... and WOW - it just keeps getting better as winter gives way to spring!

On the way home last Friday night I snapped a few pix to send to colleagues around the world trying to generate some extra visitors to Alaska this summer. The photos don't really do justice to the amazing views as they change constantly from mountain pass to sea level and even from corner to corner... but they are a great reminder of the privilege we all share living in the Great Land!









I encourage us all to take time to enjoy the changing of the seasons...