Mike Brittain

Mike has been living in Alaska for 52 years, over 40 of those in Seward. He has been a professional mariner for the past 40 years as a tugboat captain, multi-day charter boat owner/captain, and research boat owner/captain for UAF doing physical oceanography with Seward Marine Center. He has run wildlife/glacier tours out of Seward for Kenai Fjords Tours. He has run both pilot boats and assist tugs in the ports of Seward, Kodiak, and Dutch Harbor, and involved in killer whale research as a skipper/observer/photographer for North Gulf Oceanic Society in the Kenai Fjords, Eastern Aleutians, Alaska Peninsula, and Pribilof Islands. Mike studied metallurgy (properties of metals) at Case Western Reserve University.

Mike was living in Seward in 1989. He spent much of the next few years doing spill-related tug work in Seward, and was dispatched to Prince William Sound several times to help with the oil recovery efforts. For the last dozen years, he has participated in the annual SERVS’ training for oil spill response and is also trained in the capture and transport of oiled sea birds and mammals.