One of the nicest things about keeping this particular blog is that I occasionally come across the names of folks that I worked with in the past. I already mentioned my sighting of Adam Frankel in this post. Today I caught cybersight of Jan Straley, a biologist at the University of Alaska Southeast, and another fellow whale researcher from the good old days.
Jan has been in Sitka since at least the 1980s, when I first met her, studying the humpbacks and other marine mammals that travel through Southeast Alaska. I remember her as an expert on the population structure and overwintering behavior of humpbacks in that region. It’s nice to know that she is still continuing in that vein. According to this recent Washington Post article, Jan thinks that the recovery of humpback whales, a species once hunted to near extinction, is impeding the recovery of the herring population in Prince William Sound.
The herring took a major hit as a result of the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989. Their numbers have not yet returned to pre-spill abundance, and researchers want to know why. Humpbacks are only one of the suspects in this modern-day ocean mystery. I for one am glad to know that reliable researchers are teasing out the data. Important work, this. And I do enjoy vicariously catching up with the old whale folks of yore.
