The meeting’s theme will be “Creating A Fisheries Mosaic: Connections Across Jurisdictions, Disciplines, and Cultures.” A “mosaic” represents a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. We expect you will find the collection of events, symposia, and contributed papers in Anchorage to be a stimulating mosaic of fishery and aquatic science, culture, and adventure. Anchorage will be an outstanding venue to advance your professional networking and to keep current on emerging ideas in fisheries science and management, with the added bonus of an opportunity to experience some of Alaska’s scenery, wilderness, and recreational adventures.

The meeting theme reflects President Barbara Knuth’s Program of Work for her year in office, emphasizing the notion of “connections.” World-renowned fisheries artist Ray Troll has designed a stunning and inspiring meeting poster in keeping with this theme, and will speak about the convergence of his art and fisheries science as one of the meeting’s plenary session speakers. Other plenary speakers will address the relationship of indigenous knowledge with western science and fisheries management (Patricia Cochran, Alaska Native Science Commission), and emerging partnerships between business and non-profits for promoting sustainable commercial fisheries and educating consumers about the importance of making appropriate seafood choices (Heather Tausig, New England Aquarium). We encourage symposia that build on these themes, and other themes of connections across jurisdictions, disciplines, and cultures.

The Plenary Session Speakers

Patricia Cochran, an Inupiat Eskimo born and raised in Nome, Alaska, and Executive Director of the Alaska Native Science Commission, will speak about the potential for traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) to inform fisheries and aquatic resource science and management. The Commission (www.nativescience.org) is a not-for-profit corporation that provides a linkage for creating partnerships and communication between science and research and Alaska Native Communities…in effect, fostering connections across disciplines, cultures, and communities. Ms. Cochran has served previously as the Administrator of the Institute for Circumpolar Health Studies at the University of Alaska-Anchorage, and as the Local Government Program Director with the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. She currently serves as Science Advisor to the Arctic Research Commission, is a member of the Alaska Global Change Planning Team, and is Program Chair for the Indigenous Program of the International Congress on Circumpolar Health, among a variety of other advisory positions.“ChoiceCatch and the Seafood Choices Movement” will illustrate connections across for-profit and non-profit institutions, and across market-based mechanisms and conservation goals.

Our second speaker, Heather Tausig, is the Director of Conservation for the New England Aquarium (www.neaq.org), and serves as the principal investigator and manager of the ChoiceCatch Project, a cornerstone of the Sustainable Fisheries Initiative program. Ms. Tausig’s talk will describe ChoiceCatch, illustrating the Aquarium’s efforts to work directly and strategically with the seafood industry from a supply-side angle to improve global fishery stocks. The ChoiceCatch Project in particular seeks to protect critical marine resources by partnering with major corporations in order to help them shift their buying practices towards more sustainable seafood sources. Created in 2001, the ChoiceCatch Project is a collaboration with Royal Ahold in the Netherlands, currently the world’s third largest food distributor. The ChoiceCatch team works with Royal Ahold’s U.S. subsidiary, Ahold USA, which oversees approximately 1,300 supermarkets operated through six retail companies and which purchases over $350 million in seafood annually. This partnership makes it possible for the Aquarium to improve the sustainability and traceability of Ahold USA’s seafood products, based on intensive audits and research-based recommendations.

The final Plenary presentation connects fisheries science and art: “Fish Worship and the Art of Ray Troll.” Alaska artist Ray Troll (www.trollart.com) will share the twists and turns of his unique fish-inspired career. Ray moved to the Northwest in the late 1970s and eventually on to Alaska in the early 80s with a couple of art degrees in his back pocket and a lifelong interest in natural history. He settled in the rainswept coastal city of Ketchikan and began producing offbeat fish-filled T-shirts that soon gained him an audience with cannery workers, anglers, commercial fishers, and scientists. His art has toured in exhibitions at major museums across the United States. From his tree-top studio high above the Tongass Narrows, Ray draws and paints a host of humorous but scientifically-informed fishy images. Basing his quirky, aquatic images on the latest scientific discoveries, Ray brings a street-smart sensibility to the worlds of ichthyology and paleontology. He has co-authored and illustrated 6 books. The latest is an overview of his work called “Rapture of the Deep, the Art of Ray Troll,” published by the University of California Press with an essay by David James Duncan and an introduction by his long-time “partner-in-slime” Brad Matsen.