AK AFS-2002 Committee Reports

The Awards Committee announced the presentation of the Meritorious Service Award and Best Paper Awards from the Chapter's 29th Annual Meeting, 2002, Girdwood, AK. This year, the awards committee was proud to present a Meritorious Service Award to a very deserving individual. The Meritorious Service Award had not been awarded since 1998. Based on an impressive nomination, the awards committee selected and the excom approved the selection of Dr. Jie Zheng of Alaska Department of Fish and Game for his accomplishments, dedication, and service to the improvement of Alaskan Fisheries. Congratulations!

The Awards Committee annually judges posters and papers presented at the Annual Meeting. This year, the Best Student Paper was awarded to Mark D. Scheuerell "A model framework for relating life-history, freshwater habitat, and the ocean environment to Pacific salmon productivity and capacity". Mark's co-author was Ray Hilborn. The Best Poster Award was awarded to Kristin Cieciel "Growth and movement of the sea cucumber Parastichopus californicus in southeast Alaska". Her co-author was Ginny Eckert. The Best Paper Award was awarded to Alisa A. Abookire "Spawning season and length at maturity for Dover sole in the Gulf of Alaska". Congratulations!

Annual Conference: Tremendous kudos to Ted Otis, Dave Daum, Dan Urban, and everyone who helped them put on the recent Video Monitoring Workshop at the Girdwood meeting. From the standing room only attendance, it was clear this was a timely presentation of important and useful information. The workshop exemplified the professional interaction and sharing of ideas that are the real purpose of the chapter. Good job.

Thanks also to John Eiler and David Bella for their well attended and well received half-day courses. There were a number of requests after the Telemetry course for a continuation covering analysis issues. If this is something that you would be interested in attending, please contact the Committee Chair. Lastly, sincere thanks to Carol Kerkvliet, Cecil Rich, Susan McNeil, and Doug Lieb for their help with the continuing education day arrangements.

Annual Summary: The Continuing Education Committee sponsored five courses in the last year, four in conjunction with Chapter Meetings and one independent of the Chapter Meeting. Based on approximate records from the recent 2002 Chapter Meeting in Girdwood, a total of 188 people attended these five courses of which 124 (66%) were members. All courses broke even or netted a profit. This profit allows the Chapter to consider sponsoring member-requested courses whose more specialized nature may limit immediate profitability.

I’ve enjoyed being Committee Chair, but other duties require that I step down. Debby Burwen graciously and enthusiastically agreed to take over as Continuing Education Coordinator for the Chapter; she is already organizing more Technical Writing Workshops with Jud Monroe, Ph.D. in the Anchorage area for Winter/Spring 2003. She is also pursuing some other Continuing Education ideas for next year’s meeting including a Mark-Recapture short-course and a short-course on Supervisory Skills and Communication, so now is a good time to send her your course suggestions and requests: debby_burwen@fishgame.state.ak.us.

Annual Report – October 2002
Jerry Berg and Gretchen Bishop, Co-Chairs, Lisa Stuby Committee Member

Committee had the privilege of soliciting for and eventually selecting two top candidates for this years cultural diversity travel awards. The awards paid the travel expenses for two entry level fishery biologists to the annual Alaska Chapter conference in Girdwood. The goal is to help diversify our Chapter membership. The Chapter asked us to select an Alaskan Native plus one other person in a minority group for the two awards. We solicited applications from around the state and received seven excellent applications from highly qualified individuals. This made our committee selection process very challenging and was quite difficult to only be able to choose two recipients. The 2002 awardees are Karen Pletnikoff and Jodi Neil. Karen won the Alaskan Native award and currently works for the Bristol Bay Native Association as a fishery biologist in their fisheries partner program. Jodi won the minority award and is working for the Northern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association as a fish biologist I.

The Cultural Diversity award application and rating criteria need some fine tuning. Our committee will work to revise these documents prior to next years awards. If anyone has comments, ideas, or would like to be involved with the revision process, contact any one of the committee members.

This committee was established at 1995 chapter annual meeting in Wasilla. The main purpose of this committee is to maintain and keep current the Alaska Chapter web site. The committee was also responsible for routing and responding to email sent to our chapter email address.

During this past year the structure of the web site has continued to be reformatted and further standardized to achieve cohesion and identity between pages; links have been established between relevant topics among the pages; on-line e-balloting for the 2002 election is occurring successfully; each newsletter that has been put out this year has been made available on our web site in Adobe Acrobat (pdf) format; and information about training courses and meetings have been posted.

The Student Subunit moved their web site last year from the University web server to the same webserver as used by the Chapter. This new site has continued to be maintained by the Electronics Communications Committee. Their web site address is:

The committee continued to maintain an email distribution list for most Chapter members with email addresses in the Chapter's membership database. The distribution list was used successfully to "get the word out" for Chapter activities such as the recent e-balloting.

The committee is interested in hearing what members would like to see on our web site. The web site address is:

and the e-mail address for sending comment about and contributions to the web site is:

During the past 12+ years, the Alaska Chapter has sponsored the Fishes of Alaska research project. The Chapter's "Fish Key Committee" has given oversight to the project and has worked with our contractors Kitty and Tony Mecklenburg with Point Stephens Research to see this work through to completion. My report can be short and sweet this year: the book has now been published, with the initial copies shipped to the authors on April 9, 2002. AFS and the US Geological Survey are the publishers. The initial press run was 2,500 copies. All gratis copies have been distributed, and the AFS publications fulfillment center has been selling the book since mid April. According to Aaron Lerner, book production coordinator for AFS, Fishes of Alaska is one of AFS' best sellers this year.

Now I can say this is my last report from this Committee. I thank the members of the "Fish Key Committee" for all their hard work, enthusiasm, and persistence in seeing this project through to the end. I also thank the Chapter and all of the Executive Committees from past years and the individual Chapter members who have maintained confidence in the Committee and have supported the completion of this project. I believe the Chapter can take great pride in the final product.

Fisheries Communication and Education Committee

Annual Report – October 2002
Laurel Devaney and Andrea Medeiros, Committee co-chairs

Fisheries Communication and Education Committee 2002 Annual Report Laurel Devaney and Andrea Medeiros, Committee co-chairs

The goal of this committee is to increase the knowledge and skills of AFS members so that they can develop and implement outreach and education programs about their projects and Alaska's fisheries. The ultimate goal is to use our communication skills to develop respect and stewardship of our unique fisheries and aquatic resources among all Alaskans.

Andrea Medeiros, a technical writer with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Federal Subsistence Office in Anchorage, and Laurel Devaney, the education coordinator with the Fairbanks Fish & Wildlife Field Office, serve as the education committee co-chairs.

In the past year, our committee worked with Allen Bingham to get an attractive electronic version of the fishery education materials resource guide posted on the AFS web site.

The Communication and Education committee chaired a session at the 2002 state meeting called: Communication as Fisheries Management Tool. This session was well attended, and we received a number of favorable comments about the speakers and topics presented.

A Communication and Education committee meeting was also held at the 2002 state meeting. Mark Lisac, with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and Mary McBurney, with the National Park Service, gave presentations about fisheries education and training programs that they've developed. We also used this time to explore fisheries education and communication needs that can be met by this group, and brain-stormed possible topics to cover in a pre-conference workshop or future workshop sessions.

If you have any questions or suggestions for the Education committee, please feel free to contact us:

Duties: 1. Encourage and facilitate communication and exchange of ideas among Alaska Chapter members and members of the international fisheries community.2. Widen the program at Alaska Chapter meetings by facilitating the inclusion of a foreign speaker from an Arctic or sub-Arctic region of the world to discuss fisheries related issues, programs and problems from a different perspective. 3. Encourage participation of Alaska Chapter members in fisheries conferences, exchanges, and projects occurring in other countries. 4. Provide the President of the Alaska Chapter with an annual report of Committee membership, activities and accomplishments.

Members of the committee include Nick Hughes, Bill Hines, Mark Stopha, Vic Storoska, Ken Harper, Jack Piccolo, Lou Carufel, and Gordon Haas.

The International Committee has been relatively inactive during 2002. Activities have been limited to acquiring old copies of donated journals to send to Institutes in Russia. Unofficial activities have included a brief visit with Nick Hughes and his colleagues in Nelson, New Zealand in January, and attendance at the meeting of the International Society of Arctic Char Fanatics (ISACF) in October. Plans are underway to sponsor a visiting speaker for the 2003 annual meeting. I encourage anyone who is interested in participating in the committee to attend.

In 2002 membership decreased by 19 since 2001. This decrease is due in part by removing the life members that have not paid their chapter dues. Student membership has increased by 7 members over last year. We have also increased in the “other” category primarily because the young professions have been placed in this category. This membership does not include new members signed up at this year’s annual chapter conference. (Table 1).

Year	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002
Month (of report)	Aug	Aug	Sep	Sep	Sep
Active	321	306	247	287	278
Life	49	49	49	53	27
Retired	11	11	6	8	7
Student	54	51	32	43	50
Other	3	0	0	1	11
Total	438	417	334	392	373
Owes Parent AFS dues	63	83	0	0	0
Recent Delinquent (paid Parent AFS through previous year)	40	40	50	79	102
Owes Chapter	98	118	40	41	11
State/Providence (outside of AK)	13	11	8	12	14

I contacted AFS members delinquent in their chapter dues and non-members via e-mails, phone calls and letters to renew their dues or join. None of those contacted took any action to renew.

I wrote two articles in “Oncorhynchus.” The first article addressing why it is important to be an AFS member was also posted on the parent society web site. The second article stressed the advantages of being a life member

The Oncorhynchus serves as a medium to distribute information to Alaska Chapter members and other interested individuals. The newsletter was produced this year by the editor, John Thedinga. John edits and compiles articles submitted by chapter members then sends the articles to Connie Taylor of Fathom Publishing who designs, lays out, and mails the newsletter. Each issue includes a front-page article and photo supplied by a volunteer to the editor to include in the newsletter.

Everyone is welcome to submit an article to John to include in the newsletter; photos are encouraged. During the past fiscal year, four issues were printed, one at the beginning of each calendar quarter. Submission deadlines are the 10th of the last month in each quarter. In addition, the Electronic Communication Committee has worked to archive back issues on the Chapter website. To date, electronic copies are available for issues from late 1995 to the present. If you have a possible newsletter contribution, please contact John Thedinga, Newsletter Editor at: 907- 789-6025; John.Thedinga@noaa.gov.

The Past Presidents Committee was established on November 1993 as a vehicle to: (1) utilize the experience and institutional knowledge possessed by the Chapter’s past presidents; and (2) to encourage continued participation of past presidents in the Chapter’s regular and special activities. Committee members are past presidents of the Alaska Chapter s. The Past Presidents Committee met during a luncheon at the 2001 annual Chapter meeting in Sitka and Bill Bechtol was recognized as committee chair for the year Nov. 2001 to Oct 2002. One of the items resolved was the re-establishment of past president representatives (Buck Bryant, Cindy Hartmann, and Bill Bechtol) on the Wally Noerenberg Award Committee. At the 2001 Chapter business meeting, the Past Presidents Committee was charged with developing a long-range financial plan for the Chapter. During this past year, initial steps were made to develop a subcommittee, hereafter referred to as the Financial Committee, to pursue such a project. In mid summer 2002, Bechtol distributed draft wording for the goal of a financial plan, and contacted Chapter Secretary Bob Ourso to solicit a list of current annual financial inputs and outputs. Comments were solicited from all past presidents, with feedback received from approximately 6 committee members. Further discussion of the draft is scheduled for the Past Presidents luncheon at the 2003 annual Chapter meeting in Girdwood. As part of this process, chairs and members of all Chapter committees are encouraged to contact Carol Ann Woody, incoming chair for the Past Presidents Committee, with ideas on goals for future financial needs. These goals will be incorporated into a spending plan to define how best to allocate the Chapter’s financial resources in the future.

There is nothing to report. There has been no contact relative to bylaws, and no resolutions submitted to the committee or though the executive committee.

The Wally Noerenberg Award for Fishery Excellence is the highest award of the Chapter. It is bestowed as a special honor of an individual's life-long career achievements in fishery excellence. The award was created in 1981, and in 1982 was awarded posthumously to its namesake, Wally Noerenberg. Since then, there have been only nine recipients: Armin Koerning, Robert Armstrong, Clem Tillion, Steven Pennoyer, Jim Branson, Jim Reynolds, Ole Mathisen, Ken Roberson, and John H. Clark. John Clark was the last individual to receive the award in 1997. Contributions may include, but are not limited to, fisheries research; technology development; species and habitat management; innovations in harvesting, processing or marketing; academics or fisheries education; and involvement in national and international affairs affecting Alaska fisheries.

The committee is comprised of three Chapter past presidents and a committee chair that cannot be a past president. The committee members during 2002 were Buck Bryant, Cindy Hartman, Bill Bechtol, and myself. The committee solicited nominations for the Wally Norenberg Award in the Winter issue of Oncorhynchus and received one nomination prior to the July 31 deadline. The nomination was for Dr. Augustus John Paul. The committee met via teleconference on August 28 and unanimously supported A. J. Paul as a recipient for the award. Supporting documentation for the award was forwarded to the Executive Committee in early September for final approval.

Dr. A. J. Paul was a marine research scientist at the University of Alaska for over 30 years. A. J. received his MS degree at UAF in 1973 and a Ph.D. in 1987 at Hokkaido University in Japan. Most of his career was spent at the Seward Marine Center where he quickly established a very strong and extremely well funded research program. Much of his support came from agencies, which were eager to have him perform studies and experiments needed in support of fisheries management. The well-published A. J. exhibited a "broad discipline approach" to marine species, but was perhaps best known for research into crab life histories. A. J. retired in 2001 and now holds the title of Professor Emeritus.

It is amazing to me sitting here on the sun lit planes of the Edward's Plateau of Texas that I was even considered for such a prestigious AFS award in Alaska. I am surprised to receive the award because it is uncommon to grant such a prize to someone who spent his whole career having fun. I was most fortunate in having a job where I could continually explore new topics of study, and launch myself into research projects for which I was minimally trained. I can only accept the award if it is acknowledged that whatever was accomplished during my career was done with the help of many other people. Most importantly my wife Judy was always there to do the real work leaving me free to dream up ever more projects for her and my other faithful staff. A very large number of people from the University of Alaska, other universities, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, and National Marine Fisheries Service contributed to the scientific output of my research group. These colleagues are too numerous to mention but examining the co-authors of my journal publications easily identifies them. Also I was very fortunate to work at the Institute of Marine Science's Seward Laboratory that has a first class physical plant and a maintenance crew that is superb. I thank the Alaska chapter of AFS for this honor and will treasure it as a capstone to my career as a marine scientist.

American Fisheries Society Alaska Chapter

2002 Annual Committee Reports

Awards Committee

Continuing Education Committee

Cultural Diversity Committee

Electronic Communications Committee

Environmental Concerns Committee

Fish Key Committee

Fisheries Communication and Education Committee

International Relations Committee

Membership Committee

Newsletter Committee

Past Presidents Committee

Resolutions and Bylaws Committee

Salmon Stock Status Committee

Student Subunit

Wally Noerenberg Award Committee