Davin Holen is the Alaska Sea Grant Coastal Community Resilience Specialist based at the University of Alaska campus in Anchorage and coordinator for Community Engaged Fellows program. He explained that the students are part of a national cohort and that fellows work with Sea Grant programs across the nation. The fellows receive a $7,500 stipend and participate in a customized 10-week summer internship. Holen emphasized the one of the main goals for the program this year was “working with local and traditional knowledge and trying to get students from tribal groups or rural communities to work with the theme of marine coastal sciences but also to take students from “urban” Alaska out to more rural communities. He also noted that it’s a unique undergraduate opportunity.
“I think that's really important, as somebody who grew up in urban Alaska,I had never been off the road system before. I had never been to a village and it wasn't until I became an anthropologist and spent considerable time and, you know, Bristol Bay and other places, that I started to actually understand what life was like outside of the road system. I think it's a great opportunity for students from urban Alaska to actually get out to rural Alaska.”
Degan Carey, originally from Anchorage and a recent graduate with a degree in environmental science from the University of Portland is working with Holen on a National Science Foundation project called Interface of Change. She is looking at how various coastal changes are impacting communities in Kachemak Bay, Prince William Sound and Haines and Klukwan. She explained why she was interested in the opportunity to try this program out for the summer.
“I want to figure it out, and I want to dip my toes into the social science side. And so this is why it's such a good opportunity, I get to finally focus on a different side of it, because natural science is very focused on the science and the data. And I think that looking at communities and talking with communities is a really important part of why we do research.”
Alex Devon is a UAA student and has been accepted into a master’s program in applied cultural anthropology at UAA. She gave an explanation of her summer project as looking into the effects of harvest regulations on communities that rely on subsistence:
“I'm looking, right now into Bethel, and sort of looking at survey data and harvest data, and then thinking about what's because I'm an anthropology student at UAA, so sort of thinking of what social science research methods would be beneficial when looking at the sort of environmental primarily, like environmental science based work.”
Holen concluded with some final travel opportunities that will be available for the students to visit Haines and Klukwan next week to talk to community residents about red seaweed harvest and how certain features of climate change may impact the growth conditions of the species and concluded his comments on hooligan declines in the area. “They're also interested in hooligan, for example, which is an important historic resource to the Tlingket and the species has been in decline. They haven't migrated as far up the river. So people are interested in what is causing that. So, you know, it's not a resource. It's a huge harvest for subsistence and it is a valuable cultural resource for Klukwan young people.”
For more information on this and many other upcoming Sea Grant events across the state, visit the website: https://alaskaseagrant.org/. Upcoming events this month include an online Alaska Marine Policy Forum, an Alaska-Washington Mariculture Knowledge Exchange and an oyster farm operations workshop. The general mission of Alaska Sea Grant is “To enhance the sustainable use and conservation of Alaska’s marine, coastal, and watershed resources through research, education, and extension.”
Reporting from Homer, this is Emilie Springer.
