Online Observer

Valdez graduate chosen to sail with Polar Tankers’ cadet program

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Miller carried the Alyeska torch to Washington and California. Photo courtesy of Polar Tankers.
Miller carried the Alyeska torch to Washington and California. Photo courtesy of Polar Tankers.

A 2010 graduate of Valdez High School, Kathryn “Katie” Miller, was chosen to sail with Polar Tankers, Inc. as a deck officer cadet last fall.

During her 90 day tour, Miller learned about navigation, seamanship and cargo handling operations. Her experiences helped satisfy her requirements to become a person–in-charge of loading and discharging cargoes on tank ships and she acquired sea time needed to obtain her United States Coast Guard license upon graduation.

“We do a presentation for the Valdez High School Marine Tech class every year to let the students know of the opportunities in the marine field,” said Monty Morgan, Marine Superintendent for Polar Tankers in Valdez.

“Maritime academies offer a wide range of degrees, from international trade to sea going careers, and are often not utilized enough by Alaska students. Hopefully, Katie’s return to Valdez will generate more interest by the future graduates of Valdez High about careers in shipping,” said Morgan.

Miller is the first Valdez High School graduate to participate in this program. She returned to school at the United States Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, NY in November.

Staff attends Coast Guard training on incident command system

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By ALICIA ZORZETTO
Council Digital Collections Librarian

Five council staff members participated in U.S. Coast Guard sponsored training on how to manage emergencies such as oil spills. The training events took place in late March and early April.

The training focused on the Incident Command System, a standardized emergency management structure first developed in the early 1970’s to manage rapidly moving wildfires, later adopted to manage all types of emergencies and incidents.

During an oil spill, this management system provides the framework for federal, state and local representatives to work with the spiller, and other resource providers, to respond in a highly organized and somewhat standardized manner.

Council staff along with other attendees from the government and private industry reviewed the basic incident command system principles used to manage an effective response to an incident.

Learn more:  What is an Incident Command System or Unified Command?

Group plans update for oil spill educational curriculum

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By LINDA ROBINSON
Council Outreach Coordinator

A group interested in creating new educational materials about oil spills met in the council’s Anchorage office this past March.

Three of the organizations represented, the Prince William Sound Science Center, the Alaska SeaLife Center, and the council were already working on their own projects to create materials on oil spills. The science center’s plan was to compile a database of oil spill educational material focusing on all of Alaska, including the Arctic. The Alaska SeaLife Center, using funding from a grant from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, was planning to create materials on spills that occurred in the United States to help train staff to interact with the public on difficult, controversial or complicated topics. The council was just beginning the process of updating our Alaska Oil Spill Curriculum, which focused on the Exxon Valdez oil spill region. A collaborative effort by the Prince William Sound Science Center, the Oil Spill Recovery Institute and the council created that curriculum and last updated it in 2007.

The three organizations decided to once again pool resources into one project and invited representatives from Kodiak College, the Sitka Sound Science Center, and NOAA’s Auke Bay Lab to join the discussion.

Also joining the meeting was Katie Gavenus, project director for Children of the Spills, one of the council’s youth involvement projects. Katie interviewed people in the Exxon Valdez oil spill region who experienced an oil spill as a youth. You can find some of the project’s videos and interviews at: Children of the Spills

The group talked about goals for the new collaborative curriculum. In order to appeal to a broad audience, large spills around the U.S. will be included. Lesson plans will cover a variety of subjects such as science, writing and history so teachers don’t have to find time in their schedules for a separate curriculum.

The curriculum is expected to focus on the beauty, intricacy and science of ecosystems, how everything is inter-related, and why we should care about and protect it. The group is also working to include some information from the perspective of the oil industry such as what oil is, how it is produced, products we use that are made from oil and current oil spill prevention and response capabilities.

The curriculum will also include energy conservation and renewable energy topics. Older students will study more technical information and learn about oil spills as technological disasters. They will learn how people respond differently to natural disasters than to technological (or man-made) disasters and how important it is to be aware of this and to teach proper response. Information for this part of the curriculum will be taken from the council’s Coping with Technological Disasters Guidebook. For more information on this guidebook, visit our Coping with Technological Disasters page.

The old curriculum is still available on our website, but will be updated within the next few months. If you have questions or comments, please email me. Have a wonderful summer!

Study looks at changes in Columbia Glacier and effects on oil transportation

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This year, the council is sponsoring a project to study Columbia Glacier, looking at its retreat and loss of ice. The council hopes to learn more about possible future effects of icebergs on tanker traffic in Prince William Sound.

Columbia Glacier has long been of interest to the council. The glacier has been in a state of rapid retreat since the early 1980s, the reduction in mass has been mostly in the form of calving icebergs. These icebergs sometimes drift with the current and the wind into the vessel traffic lanes used by oil tankers in Prince William Sound. In 1989, the Exxon Valdez grounded on Bligh Reef while avoiding ice in the tanker lanes.

In the late 1990s, the council helped fund the Columbia Glacier Iceberg Monitoring Project, pioneering research first conducted by Austin Post and Wendell Tangborn. That project studied the potential for calved ice to damage oil tankers.

This year, the council is sponsoring a continuation of the original project, conducted by two well-known glaciologists, Tad Pfeffer and Shad O’Neel. Pfeffer is regarded for his work in glacial retreat and for studying tidewater glaciers worldwide. O’Neel has been extensively involved with research conducted at Columbia Glacier.

As part of this project, Pfeffer and O’Neel recently began looking at available data for Columbia Glacier, summarizing the current knowledge concerning the retreat of Columbia Glacier, especially in the interval since the original iceberg project. The two researchers were given access to Columbia Glacier observations since the 1970s and data acquired by Post and Tangborn.

Pfeffer and O’Neel will then attempt to document the current rate of iceberg calving and drift trajectories. They intend to reevaluate the concept of calculating glacier retreat rates using photographic records of daily changes in the terminus, or end of the glacier. They will also reevaluate the “mass balance,” or the difference between accumulation and melting of the glacier, and the iceberg production model developed by Post and Tangborn in the 1990s.

The researchers hope to determine the best estimate of glacial retreat and volume loss, evaluate how the icebergs move into the Sound and describe the passage constraints of icebergs over the submerged portion of the Columbia Glacier moraine.

Ultimately, over the next year, Pfeffer and O’Neel hope to develop a forecast for iceberg production by Columbia for the next ten years.

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