Concepts in Action: The Prince William Sound Science Center
The Prince William Sound Science Center, Cordova, Alaska
Alaska's Prince William Sound is a diverse and productive array of ecosystems located at the northern boundary of the coastal temperate rain forest. The region is endowed with spectacular scenery and a wealth of natural resources. Until recently, the waters of the sound provided abundant harvests of herring, five species of salmon, and three species of crab plus shrimp and halibut. Mining operations, limited timber harvests, and fox farms diversified the economic base of commercial fishing that began in the 1880s and remains the region's chief industry. In the mid-1970s, another major industry entered the sound: the storage and transport of crude oil from Alaska's North Slope.
The Prince William Sound Science Center was organized in 1989 through the efforts of fishers and scientists living in Cordova, a fishing community of about 3000 residents located on the eastern side of the sound. The center's founders were concerned about increasing demands on the sound's wealth of fish, timber, and mineral resources and recognized the need for an independent local source of credible scientific information. The center was designed to promote a base of knowledge that might help communities around the sound build sustainable economies on the natural diversity and abundance of species in the sound.
Gary Thomas, President of The Prince William Sound Science Center
The devastating 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill on Bligh Reef catalyzed the formal establishment of the Science Center and changed its course of development. Prince William Sound was the area hit hardest by the oil spill. In the years immediately following the spill, the returns of commercially harvested pin salmon and herring were in the range of preseason predictions. But in 1992, a dramatic decline in both populations began; it continued into 1995. Is this decline connected to the oil spill? Scientific studies, to date, indicate a probable but still uncertain connection.
Frustrated by the lack of studies designed to answer why the sound's ecosystem was no longer producing its former abundance of herring and pink salmon, and in turn the species dependent on them, fishers literally put their boats and lives on the line. For three days in August 1993, they blockaded all oil tanker traffic to and from the Valdez oil terminal.
This dramatic action catalyzed creation of a fisheries research planning group composed of scientists, fishers, local resource managers, environmentalists, and other interested residents in the region. The Science Center took a leading role in the Planning Group, writing a plan focused on the unanswered questions about the biological and physical processes of Prince William Sound. By early 1994, thirteen research projects based on the plan were under way, funded by the Exxon Valdez oil spill settlement.
It is all too common for residents of remote regions to be the last to hear the latest scientific information about resources and the ecosystems surrounding them. A key component of the Science Center's mission is to distribute the best available information to residents of the greater Prince William Sound region so that they will be able to participate in resource management issues effectively.
The Science Center is a unique entity: not-for-profit, independent, strongly academic yet not affiliated with a university, and not an advocacy group. It seeks to disseminate widely the results of its work to the general public, as well as to the scientific community. Its vision of community-based science, though not without its limitations, is alive and well in Prince William Sound.
Nancy Bird is vice president of the Prince William Sound Science Center in Cordova, Alaska. Ecotrust helped to establish the Prince William Sound Science Center. This essay is adapted from The Rain Forests of Home: Profile of a North American Bioregion.