Sampling expert is boon to science committee
Like many Alaskans, Scientific Advisory Committee member Mark Udevitz never expected to end up in Alaska. He heard stories about the state from his father, who lived here in the 1940’s and considered Alaska a good place for a vacation.
In 1990, he received a job offer with U.S. Fish and Wildlife as a wildlife biometrician. Wildlife biometricians conduct research on techniques for sampling wildlife populations, and estimating characteristics such as population size and survival rates.
One of Udevitz’s first tasks upon arriving in Alaska was to help assess damages to the sea otter population from the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Udevitz would be dropped off on a rock in a remote area of Prince William Sound for hours at a time to observe and count otters.
Parts of his workday would be intense with planes flying overhead and lots of activity. In between, there was a lot of down time. Rather than feel bored or isolated, Udevitz often took the opportunity to explore and examine tide pools.
“The Sound is a neat place to work,” he said about the experience, “Anything that involves being out on a boat, I’m up for it.”
More recently, Udevitz has been working for the U.S. Geological Survey helping to develop a new technique to estimate the Pacific walrus population.
Walruses depend on the floating Arctic ice for reproduction and access to food. During recent periods of reduced sea ice, walruses were hauling out on Alaskan and Russian shores where they had never appeared before.
Scientists have been trying to monitor walrus populations to estimate effects of the reduced ice pack. Previous attempts to count walruses through low-altitude airplane surveys were slow. Results were unreliable and included a lot of guesswork.
Udevitz explained the new technique. High-altitude surveys use cutting-edge infrared technology scan the sea ice to detect groups of walruses. Lower altitude flybys are then conducted to get high-resolution photos of selected groups, permitting a much more accurate estimate of the number of walruses on the ice.
The old surveys didn’t have a reliable method to determine how many walruses were missed because they were in the water at the time of the survey. In the new survey, walruses are monitored to figure out the average time spent in the water. These new procedures will help Udevitz and his partners to more accurately determine the overall number of walruses.
Udevitz’s expertise in designing such sampling surveys has been of great value to the council’s Scientific Advisory Committee, known as SAC. Udevitz was recruited to the committee in 2008, and is excited to have joined the group during such an interesting period.
To ensure the council’s core issues are being addressed, the committee has been rethinking how the council fulfills its requirement for environmental monitoring.
“It’s an interesting time right now for SAC. We’re in the process of re-evaluating what’s been done, and how that fits in with the bigger picture,” Udevitz said, “We’re going back to the founding principles of the council and taking another look at the Oil Pollution Act of 1990.”
Udevitz says the council has gotten some really useful information from the Sound through the Long Term Environmental Monitoring Project, which has been scaled back in recent months. In the near future, “I expect some refinements and some improvements and some expansions that will improve its utility.”
A more comprehensive monitoring program seems to be evolving from the committee’s recent work . “That is sort of conceptual at this point,” Udevitz said.
The committee may be interested in sampling other species, or using other methods to get a fuller picture of the environment of the Sound.
“We realize that the monitoring program can be more than this one project. It’s kind of wide open right now and we’re in more of a brainstorming phase.”
Udevitz hopes the committee can work with other organizations, such as the council’s recent partnership to install a new weather station on Kayak Island, to make the most of the council’s resources.
“There is a limit to what the council can do, so we’re also trying to look hard at what other people are doing and how we can leverage that and use our resources to fill gaps.”
“Right now there are a lot of ideas cooking. I expect good things.”