In November, the Council welcomed its newest staff member. Peter Casey joined the Council in the position of Project Manager Assistant. He is based in the Anchorage office.
Casey was born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota, and attended the University of Glasgow where he earned a bachelor’s degree in history and politics.
Prior to working with the Council, he held various jobs in youth development, including as the program director of multiple summer camps and running a greenhouse and vocational training program in Anchorage.
He is replacing Jaina Willahan, who held the position since 2021. Willahan is staying on staff until early December to help train Casey.
Each September, when the Council holds a Board meeting in one of our stakeholder communities, we host a youth engagement event called “Become a Master of Disaster.” Following a pause during the Covid pandemic, this event has been revitalized with two successful events, one in Kodiak in 2024 and another in Cordova this fall. The event educates and connects local children with topics related to our mission in an age-appropriate way.
Youth and caregivers move through a series of hands-on oil spill and marine science activities, facilitated by adults including Council Board members, committee volunteers, staff, and staff from partner groups. Students learn how oil spills are cleaned up and how oiled wildlife are cleaned and cared for during a response. They compete in a running race the length of an oil tanker, and learn to identify marine invasive species. Students collect stamps in a passport-style book and complete a reflection activity as their final stop before collecting a prize.
We have been grateful to include local partner organizations in the event. In Kodiak, the Kodiak Ocean Science Discovery Program, or KOSDP, donated use of their lab classroom space and supplies, and some of their educators joined Council staff and volunteers to run activities. KOSDP taught students about oil molecules and where oil comes from. They hosted a station about ocean life, where students could examine plankton under microscopes.
Kate Morse teaches Cordova students how Geographic Response Strategies, or GRS, are developed. GRS are specialized oil spill contingency plans that are tailored to protect specific environments.
In Cordova, staff from the Prince William Sound Science Center led a hands-on opportunity for students to drive mini-remotely operated vehicles to collect ping pong balls (representing oil) floating in water. They also facilitated participants dressing up in oil spill personal protective equipment. Kate Morse, the Copper River Watershed Project’s Executive Director and member of the Council’s Information and Education Committee, worked with her staff to create an activity where youth learned about Geographic Response Strategies, or GRS, and then got to create one for Eyak Lake, a familiar local environmental resource. This tied in well with the Council’s recent work to update the Copper River Delta GRS. The activity successfully scaled the complex topic in an understandable way for elementary-age children.
The 2024 and 2025 participating groups routinely partner with the Council to support projects to educate local students. Their staff also collaborate on other Council projects and areas of overlap. Including local partners in this event strengthens connections with youth, as these partner staff are familiar and known adults and educators within their community.
Council Board member Mike Bender shows a Cordova student how fishing vessels can help respond after a spill.Students play with remote operating vehicles that simulate collecting spilled oil.
Become a Master of Disaster engages Exxon Valdez oil spill region kids in oil spill and marine science topics that align with the Council’s mission in an age-appropriate educational format. Participants in both Kodiak and Cordova expanded their existing knowledge, learned more about oil spills, and drew connections to their local coastal environment and community. I am grateful to the local entities and partners, as well as Council volunteers and staff, for their contributions to make this event happen and for sharing their oil spill and marine science knowledge with the next generation of stewards.
Kevin Berry is a member of the Council’s Terminal Operations and Environmental Monitoring Committee. The committee works to identify actual and potential sources of episodic and chronic pollution at the Valdez Marine Terminal.
A first glance at Kevin Berry’s work history looks a little random. His curriculum vitae is sprinkled with a wide variety of topics, from disease, species loss, fisheries, to weather.
“Typically, if you look at an engineer or physical scientist, they might specialize in a species, or a place, or a specific thing.” Berry says that as an economist, there is a social science aspect to what he does. “I’m interested in a type of decision, and a type of human behavior, how people respond to looming catastrophic risks.”
Berry says the common thread in what he studies is that there is something that can be done about the risk. He uses Lyme disease as an example.
“You can change your behavioral patterns and spend less time where there are ticks,” he says. “You can wear different types of clothing or you can get medical treatment after getting sick.”
Berry says this is a pattern of three broad strategies that are used in response to risk: prevention, adaptation, and mitigation.
“We can invest in prevention to keep the bad thing from occurring,” says Berry. “We can invest in infrastructure and training practices, the things that make it less likely we’ll have a problem.”
“We can adapt to a problem,” adds Berry. “Basically, we can make it so that if it does occur, it’s not as bad.”
“And then we can mitigate things once they happen,” Berry concludes. “We can clean up afterwards to avoid negative impacts.”
Berry attended the University of Wyoming where he received a bachelor’s and Ph.D. in resource economics. He’s currently a Professor of Economics at the University of Alaska Anchorage, where he chairs their Economics Department.
He works with economic models that help analyze tradeoffs. These models can help make decisions when options aren’t easy to compare. There are different models that can help adapt to random occurrences that affect a decision.
“They’re cool math problems,” Berry says. “Every time we change a little bit, we have to find a new strategy. You can turn a really complicated thing into a really neat problem, where we can talk about the returns to preventing disasters in the same way we’d talk about investing in the stock market.”
He gives an example related to early childhood education. Berry serves as the current Board president for Thread, a local nonprofit that works to advance the quality of early education and child development, and on the board of the Anchorage Child Care and Early Education Fund. He started volunteering because he’s a father of three kids, but the topic also piqued his professional interests.
“We can think of childcare and early education as prevention for a lot of other social ills,” Berry says. “We know from various economic research at the University of Chicago and James Heckman’s Institute that there is a massive return in reduced criminal activity, higher educational outcomes, and better career outcomes.”
That curiosity and drive to use his talents to make a difference also brought him to the Council. One of the Council’s main priorities is to reduce the risk of oil spills. It’s important to understand all the options and tradeoffs.
“Obviously, every time we recommend an improvement or investment, for instance, in the response fleet, we’re hoping to make a potential spill less severe,” Berry says. “We want balance to make sure that we’re getting the most risk reduction for the time and effort.”
In 2022, the Metlakatla Indian Community first spotted shells of European green crab, or Carcinus maenus, during regular monitoring at the Annette Islands Reserve. Subsequent monitoring turned up live crabs.
This summer, the group reported a large population growth in the surrounding area.
Monitors reported trapping 2,133 in 2023, and 1,865 in 2024. That number jumped to over 40,000 this year.
This species is of particular concern because it is aggressive. It has destroyed habitats and outcompeted local species in other locations. Among its prey are juvenile king crab and juvenile salmon.
The Council has been studying these crab and other marine invasive species since 1996. Research on has shown that:
The crab survives in environments like Prince William Sound. A warming climate makes an even more suitable habitat.
Larvae of the crabs could survive a trip to Alaska in an oil tanker’s ballast water.
Links to additional resources, and what to do if you see a suspected green crab: www.pwsrcac.org/greencrab
