[dropcap][/dropcap]In the 1990s, the endangered status of the short-tailed albatross catalyzed efforts to reduce the number of birds accidentally killed as bycatch in Alaska, home to the country’s biggest fisheries. Marine fisheries scientist Ed Melvin, at Washington Sea Grant at the University of Washington, and research associate Kim Dietrich, an independent contractor, were at the […]
Nine years after it erupted, Kasatochi Island is just beginning to resemble its neighbors. Kasatochi is a speck in the middle of the Aleutian chain between Dutch Harbor and Adak, about 75 miles east of the latter. The volcanic island had no modern history of erupting until August 2008. In a few days that summer, […]
Using a new net, marine biologists from the Alfred Wegener Institute have, for the first time, been able to catch polar cod directly beneath the Arctic sea ice with a trawl, allowing them to determine their large-scale distribution and origin. This information is of fundamental importance, as polar cod are a major source of food […]
“If only animals could talk,” said Veronica Padula, a UAA graduate student researching seabird decline in the Aleutian Islands, “then they could tell us what’s wrong with them.” Instead, Padula and ecology professor Douglas Causey must take the long path to an answer—research that involves lengthy and stormy boat treks through the Aleutian archipelago right […]