Sea Change in the High North
By: U.S.Fish Wildlife Alaska
Tags: Oceans, Climate Change, Environment, Birds, Science

When did you join the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service?

Kathy: I first started as a seasonal wildlife biologist technician in 1978. I worked off and on, and then became permanent in 1997.

Robb: Cumulatively, I have spent 13 years working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; first seasonal position was 2002, followed by a 4-year term position in 2010, and then a permanent position in 2014.

Liz: I started in Alaska as a biologist for the U.S. Geological Survey in 1999, and then began working for USFWS in 2001, and became a permanent biologist in 2013.

What do you think people would find most surprising about your job?

Liz: Maybe that they think of the agency’s mission as wholly land-based. In Alaska we also do a great deal of research in coastal and offshore marine environments. Seabirds will typically only come to land for a few weeks out of the year to nest and raise their chicks. They spend the rest of their time at sea.

Kathy: They’d probably be surprised by how much creative and interpretive work is involved. People tend to think of USFWS as a permitting and regulatory agency, but we do a great deal of hands-on field work, including projects involving international effort and cooperation. That’s necessary, of course, due to migratory species — they don’t recognize national boundaries.

Robb: That as a wildlife biologist, 90–95% of my typical work day is NOT spent thinking about biology, but instead reading/responding to emails and managing my inbox.

How do Alaska’s wild places sustain you?

Kathy: Just the fact that I live in one of the world’s most beautiful places is sustaining. I really feel at my best when I’m outside, either at sea or in the wilderness.

Liz: I feel rejuvenated every morning when I step outside or go up to the bridge on a boat. They say Alaska begins 10 minutes from downtown Anchorage, and it’s true. Being surrounded by such a vast expanse of wilderness is an inspiration.

Robb: Wild places connect me to why I am a civil servant working to keep wild places wild.

What’s your foremost concern about Alaska’s wildlife resources?

Liz: Speaking specifically to seabirds, I’d have to say the changes in the marine environment — especially the pace of these changes, including receding tidewater glaciers and the decline in annual sea ice thickness and extent. Sea ice triggers spring blooms of algae forming the base of the marine food web. When the sea ice declines, marine productivity can decline along with it. I’m also concerned about the potential impacts of increased vessel traffic in the Arctic that is accompanying the decline in sea ice and how those changes can potentially impact the marine resources in the region.

Kathy: The impacts of climate change. It’s affecting ecosystems everywhere, but we’re feeling it at multiple levels here, and at such a rapid pace we notice year-by-year changes. Wildlife adapts over geologic time. In Alaska, wild species have been able to adapt to extended periods of glaciation and de-glaciation. But they’ve never had to adapt to anything like we’re currently seeing in such a compressed time scale.

Robb: My foremost concern about Alaska’s wildlife resources is that management goals and objectives sometimes seem to have little regard for what future generations of Alaskans will inherit.

When I’m not at work, I’m…

Robb: I am biking with my wife Leah, and dog Otto, on the awesome trails and pedestrian boulevards around and throughout Anchorage.

Kathy: Outside, and probably birding.

Liz: I’m outdoors, just doing as much as I can and enjoying Alaska — running, biking and gardening in my backyard. Being a marine biologist sometimes gives the impression that you’re always outside, but so much of what we do is behind a desk and in front of a computer. I have to get out whenever possible to remind myself why we do this work.

What’s the greatest misconception visitors have about Alaska?

Robb: Perhaps that you can “see it all” in one trip. I’d say it takes at least three trips to Alaska and even that is only the tip of the iceberg (which you should try to see during your first trip).

Kathy: They expect to see wildlife in spectacular concentrations, doing exciting things all the time. As anyone who has spent any time in the wilderness knows, you typically have to devote many hours to being outside, being quiet, watching and waiting, to see anything at all. Also, people are often surprised by how intensely green it is here during the spring and summer.

Liz: They often misunderstand the scale of the state, and how Alaska’s various regions differ so dramatically. In Southeast Alaska you have old-growth forests, while the interior is a mix of spruce, birch and tundra, and the Aleutians don’t have any trees at all. Alaska is vast and extremely diverse ecologically.

What’s your most treasured memory of Alaska or your job?

Liz: There are so many — including just being at sea. A special moment was my first time in the Bering Strait. I had a family member tell me about the time they spent stationed in this region years ago on the Russian side of the border. I was touched to think about his experience and having the opportunity to see this unique part of the world for myself. When I was there in May the Bering Strait was packed with sea ice surrounding Big and Little Diomede Islands located in the middle of the Bering Strait. The ice was impassable even for the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker that we were on.

Robb: Sharing our “own island” for six summers in the western Aleutians with my life partner, Leah.

Kathy: A touchstone experience for me was working on Naked Island in Prince William Sound. It’s this spectacular, tidal-influenced wilderness. Your days revolve around the tide come in and out, and feeling the entire island breathe as a single organism.

What advice would you give people who want to work for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service?

Kathy: Contact the people working in a field that interests you, and be flexible in terms of what you’re willing to do.

Liz: It’s like my mentor, Guy Baldassarre, said to me: take opportunities as they come. You never know what you might learn, or where it will take you. Just engage, and see where things lead.

Robb: There are a lot of options for career paths at the world’s premier conservation organization. I would tell people to (i) think long and hard about what gets you excited or you find rewarding about wild places, fish and wildlife, then (ii) seek out a career that will result helping save some of that for future generations to enjoy.

What wildlife species particularly inspires you?

Robb: Seabirds and marine mammals. I am inspired by how seabirds and marine mammals make a living wandering the ocean, which on its surface looks barren and can be unforgiving.

Kathy: The Laysan Albatross. It nests in Hawaii, and then soars all the way across the Pacific to Alaska to feed. I’m always excited when I see one.

Liz: Well, I’m biased, so I’d have to say seabirds in general. They’re out there making a living on the open ocean, and it isn’t easy. We have three species of albatross in Alaskan waters, and I’m so impressed by the distances they travel. And fork-tailed storm petrels are these tiny gray birds that use the air currents in cresting seas to dance over the waves. When you’re watching a storm-petrel fly near the surface of the water, sometimes it looks like it’s going to be knocked out of the air by a massive wave, and at the last moment it just casually flits over the top of the wave crest with seemingly little effort at all. Whether they’re large birds like the albatrosses or tiny ones like the storm petrels, they all use the resources of the ocean, each in its own way, to survive.

How and why did you come to Alaska?

Kathy: I spent most of my childhood at the China Lake Naval Weapons Center in California, where my dad worked as a chemist. It’s in the Mojave Desert, and I loved it — there were so many places to roam and explore. But then I took my undergraduate degree at California State Polytechnic, San Luis Obispo on California’s Central Coast, and I was fascinated by the ocean. It seemed exotic to me, and I made my first positive seabird identification there — a Pigeon Guillemot. After graduation, I took a job in the Fisheries Division of the Fish and Wildlife Service, sampling streams and lakes. I went back to school and completed my Master’s Degree from the University of California at Irvine with research focused on Pigeon Guillemots at Naked Island in Prince William Sound. I ended up living on the Kenai Peninsula. I did some private consulting, fished commercially with my husband, we had our son, and then the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill happened in Prince William Sound, and I conducted damage assessment and recovery studies for Fish and Wildlife. I got my PhD at the University of Victoria in British Columbia based on that work, and I’ve been working for the agency ever since.

Robb: I was raised in Spokane, but my love for the outdoors grew out of visits to my grandfather’s cabin on Priest Lake in northern Idaho. I took my undergraduate degree at The Evergreen State College in Washington, where I fell in with a bunch of birders from the East Coast. Birding became both a passion and a gateway to my career. After college, I had a variety of bird-related jobs. I worked for the U.S. Forest Service in Northern California surveying Marbled Murrelets and Spotted Owls, Peregrine Falcons at Vandenberg Air Force Base for the UC Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group, then finally came to Alaska in 2001 to survey Spectacled Eiders and other seaducks for a private consultant who had a contract in Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope. After that I studied ovenbirds in shaded coffee plantations in Jamaica, went back to Alaska to work for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife surveying Common Murres, Thick-billed Murres and Red-faced Cormorants at the Alaska Peninsula Becharof National Wildlife Refuges, studied Loggerhead Shrikes on San Clemente Island off the California coast, and then returned to the Alaska Peninsula to work for USFWS again. I spent six summers surveying seabirds and Evermann’s Rock Ptarmigan on Agattu and Attu Islands in the Aleutians, work that also was the basis for my Master’s Degree from Kansas State University. I worked seasonal and term positions for USFWS through that period until I was hired permanently in 2014.

Liz: I grew up on a small dairy farm in upstate New York. It was a wonderful place to be free to explore the woods and creeks, catch frogs and watch birds— it all instilled a love of nature that carried through to my undergraduate work at the University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry. When I was a junior in college I got my first job in Alaska working on a summer waterfowl project on the North Slope for the U.S. Geological Survey. I spent three months on a remote island in the Arctic called Flaxman Island in the Beaufort Sea researching and banding long-tailed ducks and eiders, and I just loved it. I learned a lot on the biology side, and I also learned how to live and work with people in a remote field camp setting. I went back to the Lower 48, got my degree, and then returned to work at Flaxman Island again for USGS the following summer, followed by a wading bird foraging ecology project in Cape Canaveral in Florida. Then in 2001 I got a call from Kathy to come back up to Alaska for a seasonal summer position surveying Kittlitz’s Murrelets in Prince William Sound. The temporary seasonal position with USFWS evolved over time — and I never went back. I’ve been here ever since.