Long-time Alaskan, and Council volunteer for over 16 years, Cathy Hart has always had a lot of different irons in a lot of different fires. Her passion for telling stories with photographs winds through almost everything she does, including her work on the Council’s Information and Education Committee.
Cathy Hart is a member of the Council’s Information and Education Committee. The committee supports the Council’s mission by fostering public awareness, responsibility, and participation through information and education. The committee sponsors projects such as Masters of Disaster, a special event for kids of all ages to learn about topics related to the Council’s mission. At a recent event, Hart (center) taught Kodiak students about oil spill response.
This passion ignited early, not long after her father’s job as an engineer in the oil industry moved the family to Alaska in the late 1960s. The teenaged Hart was exploring her new home state when she spotted an eagle.
“I watched him dive down and get something on the ground,” she recalls.
She was entranced and wanted to capture that moment. She soon got her first camera as a gift from her father.
She found she was good at capturing action shots. She photographed kids’ sports, theater, and dance, and sold the images. Her passion was for the outdoors though.
After retiring from piloting, Terpening spent a few years commercial fishing out of Bristol Bay with his son.
A teenage Gordon Terpening grew up watching ships navigating in and out of San Francisco Bay, and knew early on exactly what he wanted to do after high school.
“Once I heard about what a ship’s pilot did, I decided that’s what I wanted to do.”
After graduating from the California Maritime Academy with a Bachelor’s in Nautical Science, Terpening realized these ambitions and went to sea. His first job, towing lumber out of Coos Bay, Oregon, was just the beginning. He’s been involved in the maritime industry in one way or another ever since. Turns out he was one of the lucky humans who get to love their life’s work.
“I’m a sea going guy,” he says. The combination of peaceful and exciting fit him perfectly.
“Going to sea is basically hours and hours of boredom broken up by moments of sheer terror.”
Over the years, Terpening has piloted vessels around the U.S. and the world. It’s not just the locations that varied, it’s the type of work. He’s worked on a seagoing dredge doing underwater excavation, provided ocean transportation for the Navy as a civilian in the Military Sealift Command, on board tankers in the Far East, hauled jet fuel around the world, and supplied and towed oil rigs near Trinidad and Tobago.
“Generally, it was always so rough off the east coast of Trinidad,” Terpening says. “The trade winds are blowing from the east and the current from South America is flowing north, so you’re always in the trough.”
“This was before the Amoco Cadiz in France and before the Brayer in Shetland, and so the big spills were kind of yet to come.”
These experiences fine-tuned his skills at handling boats and trained him well for his years as a vessel pilot in Alaska.
Terpening says piloting in some other parts of the world, in and out of the same port day after day, can seem dull in comparison.
“When you’re a pilot in southwestern Alaska, all the ports are all different, and they all have their own problems,” he says. “And you get to see the wildest parts of Alaska. I loved it.”
Terpening describes how he analyzed the approach to each port, evaluating the forces such as wind, waves, and propulsion that are acting on the ship.
“It’s kind of like constantly drawing vector diagrams in your head,” he says. “That’s what I see when I’m docking a ship. It’s all just math.”
Terpening says he’s happy to be able to use these varied experiences to contribute to the work of the Council’s Port Operation and Vessel Traffic System Committee. He thinks that the Council’s independent oversight, as mandated by the U.S. Congress, makes a big difference.
“I try to tell other people about how amazing I think this committee is,” Terpening says. He pointed out a Council report on “messenger lines” as an example.
Passing a messenger line is the first step in setting up a tow line between a tug and a tanker in distress. The lighter weight messenger line helps responders connect the heavy tow lines. In 2020, the Council studied the best methods and tools for passing these lines between vessels. Little research had been done on the topic before.
“I mean that is amazing stuff that nobody would do unless you had the funding and the wherewithal of a committee like ours.”
Gordon Terpening is a member of the Council’s Port Operations and Vessel Traffic Systems Committee. The committee monitors port and tanker operations in Prince William Sound.
Tim Robertson is a member of the Council’s Oil Spill Prevention & Response Committee. The committee works to minimize the risk and impacts associated with oil transportation through research, advice, and recommendations for strong and effective spill prevention and response measures, contingency planning, and regulations.
Growing up in western North Carolina, over 3,000 miles away from Alaska, Tim Robertson and his brothers Roy and Andy knew all about the 49th state. His dad was obsessed.
“If there was a TV show or a movie or anything about Alaska, he drug the whole family to see it,” Robertson says. All three brothers ended up moving here.
These days Tim splits his time between Alaska and Hawaii. At first glance, it might seem like the two states are very different, but Tim’s values are present in both.
“I’m a small-boat guy on big water,” he says. “There’s the same connection with the ocean. A lot of mornings I watch the sun rise from the water. It’s a big part of what I am.”
Robertson spent his first few years in Alaska working in an oil-related field, first as a research biologist for Alaska Department of Fish and Game, then for an oil field service company.
He dreamt of a different career though. Robertson acquired land in Seldovia in 1985, and partnered with another family to build Harmony Point Wilderness Lodge, an ecotourism business. They had only been in business a few short years when the Exxon Valdez ran aground.
“The first time I ever heard of ICS [Incident Command System] was when we had a community meeting after the spill,” says Robertson.
Wei Cheng is a member of the Council’s Scientific Advisory Committee. The committee is made up of scientists and citizens working to promote the environmentally safe operations of the terminal and tankers through independent scientific research, environmental monitoring, and review of scientific work.
Volunteer Spotlight: Wei Cheng
Wei Cheng says she is happy and fortunate to be able to use her expertise in genetics to help protect Alaska’s salmon.
At her job with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, or ADF&G, she analyzes genetic changes in fish to map the relationships among populations of salmon and other species of fish. The information she gains helps fisheries managers make decisions protect the integrity of wild populations of fish species.
Cheng is surprised at how much she enjoys the work. “To be honest, I was not interested in fisheries at all at the beginning,” she laughs.
Before coming to the United States from China, she graduated from medical school. Her area of interest was in human genetics and diseases, so she moved to Pittsburgh for graduate work in molecular biology at Duquesne University.
After graduation, her husband’s work brought them to Juneau.
“In Alaska we don’t have medical schools, pharmaceutical companies, or medical research labs,” Cheng says about her search for a job.
But she got lucky. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Auke Bay Laboratories reeled her in to help with studies using genetic analysis.
“That’s where I started working in fisheries.”
Cheng and her family eventually ended up in Anchorage, where she now works at ADF&G’s Gene Conservation Laboratory.
She has studied the population structure of pink salmon in Prince William Sound This study is the initial step to examine the interactions of wild and hatchery pink salmon in the area.
Salmon tend to spawn in the streams and rivers where they were born. But Cheng says sometimes they stray.
