Volunteer Spotlight

Volunteer Spotlight 

On March 23, 1989, Prince William Sound fisherman Gordon Scott didn’t know a thing about oil spills, and if you had asked him that day, he probably wouldn’t have been too interested.

“I was in Anchorage selling shrimp when the Exxon Valdez hit the rocks.”

On Friday morning, March 24, he saw the headlines about the spill. He didn’t fish near Bligh Reef, so at first he wasn’t worried. On his rounds delivering shrimp, however, all the customers he talked to were asking if this would affect him. Would he still be able to keep fishing for shrimp?

“Of course,” he told them, “this isn’t going to affect me! I’m a fisherman, that’s an oil spill, it’s a tanker.”

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Volunteer Spotlight

Sarah Allan, newest member of the council’s Scientific Advisory Committee, known as SAC, has been fascinated by science and the natural world from a young age.

Allan was born and raised in the tiny Southeast Alaska community of Thorne Bay on Prince of Wales Island.

“I was always interested in science from a really young age, my folks were both high school science teachers, so I was exposed to a lot of science,” she says. “There’s a mentality that lends itself to science, that wanting to know the why and how of things.”

“Understanding the why and how actually makes things that much more interesting and fascinating.”

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Volunteer Spotlight:

John Kennish, chair of the council’s Scientific Advisory Committee, also known as SAC, found his life’s calling early.

“I knew I’d be a chemist in the 11th grade when my teacher told us how scientists first figured out the composition of water,” Kennish said. “What excited me was how you could take indirect evidence and use your own sense of logic to draw conclusions about what was really occurring.”

“I thought that was awesome.”

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Orson Smith, the newest member of the council’s Port Operations and Vessel Traffic System committee, loves a good mental challenge.

Smith was recruited by council project manager Alan Sorum to the committee a little over a year ago. Working with the committee has given him a chance to understand the terminal and the Coast Guard’s Vessel Traffic System better.

“Port operations in the Valdez Arm represent truly challenging port and coastal engineering issues with the extreme weather,” Smith said, “The risk of an accident, even at a low probability, has a high cost.”

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