The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred in Prince William Sound, Alaska, on March 24, 1989. Exxon Valdez, an oil supertanker owned by Exxon Shipping Company bound for Long Beach, California struck Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef, 1.5 mi (2.4 km) west of Tatitlek, Alaska at 12:04 a.m. and spilled 10.8 million US gallons (257,000 bbl) of crude oil over the next few days.
Inuit religion is the shared spiritual beliefs and practices of the Inuit, an indigenous people from Alaska, northern Canada, parts of Siberia and Greenland. Their religion shares many similarities with some Alaska Native religions. Traditional Inuit religious practices include animism and shamanism, in which spiritual healers mediate with spirits. Today many Inuit follow Christianity, but traditional Inuit spirituality continues as part of a living, oral tradition and part of contemporary Inuit society. Inuit who balance indigenous and Christian theology practice religious syncretism.
Valdez is a city in the Chugach Census Area in the U.S. state of Alaska. According to the 2020 US Census, the population of the city is 3,985, up from 3,976 in 2010. It is the third most populated city in Alaska's Unorganized Borough.
The Alaska Peninsula National Wildlife Refuge is a United States National Wildlife Refuge in southwestern Alaska whose use is regulated as an ecological-protection measure. It stretches along the southern coast of the Alaska Peninsula, between the Becharof National Wildlife Refuge on its east and the end of the peninsula at False Pass in the west. In between, however, it is broken into sections by lands of the Aniakchak National Monument and Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge is administered from offices in King Salmon, Alaska and was established to conserve Alaska Peninsula brown bears, caribou, moose, marine mammals, shorebirds, other migratory birds and fish, and to comply with treaty obligations.
Joseph Jeffrey Hazelwood was an American sailor. He was the captain of Exxon Valdez during her 1989 oil spill. He was accused of being intoxicated which contributed to the disaster, but was cleared of this charge at his 1990 trial after witnesses testified that he was sober around the time of the accident. Hazelwood was convicted of a lesser charge, negligent discharge of oil, fined $50,000, and sentenced to 1,000 hours of community service.
Kittlitz's murrelet is a small alcid found in the waters off Alaska and Eastern Siberia. This near threatened species is, like the closely related marbled murrelet, unusual for seabirds in not being colonial, nesting instead in isolated locations on mountain tops, where the nests were known to Native Americans for many years before skeptical ornithologists described and photographed them. It is a poorly known and little studied species, although concern over its status and that of the closely related marbled murrelet has led to a recent increase in research.
Trident Seafoods is the largest seafood company in the United States. It is based in Seattle, Washington. It manages a network of fishing ships, processing plants, and a vertically integrated distributorship of its products. It sells frozen, canned, smoked and ready-to-eat seafood products for the wholesale, retail and food service markets under a variety of different brand names. Many crab boats seen in the Deadliest Catch TV series are affiliated with Trident.
Paul L Money FRAS, FBIS, is an astronomer based in Horncastle, Lincolnshire, England. He is well known for his extensive talks and is the reviews editor of the BBC Sky at Night magazine. He broadcasts occasionally on BBC Radio Lincolnshire and Lincoln City Radio. He was awarded the 'Eric Zucker' award for 2002/2003 for contributions to Astronomy by the Federation of Astronomical Societies. In October 2012 he was also awarded the Sir Arthur Clarke Lifetime Achievement Award for 2012 by the British Rocketry Oral History Project for his active promotion of astronomy and space to the public. From 2004 until 2013 he was one of the three Astronomers on the Omega Holidays Northern Lights Flights and was also a Solar Eclipse Astronomer for their 2006 Turkey Solar Eclipse Trip and their 2009 China Solar Eclipse trip. In 2008 he was the Solar Eclipse expert and part of the expedition team for Poseidon Arctic Voyages on board the Russian Nuclear powered Ice Breaker 'Yamal' for the 2 August 2008 Solar Eclipse, viewed from the Arctic ice near the Franz Joseph Lands Islands. He has published a night sky guide called Nightscenes since 2000 and more recently has become a novelist with a Ghost Mysteries series and several Sci Fi works in the pipeline.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) is a department within the government of Alaska. ADF&G's mission is to protect, maintain, and improve the fish, game, and aquatic plant resources of the state, and manage their use and development in the best interest of the economy and the well-being of the people of the state, consistent with the sustained yield principle. ADF&G manages approximately 750 active fisheries, 26 game management units, and 32 special areas. From resource policy to public education, the department considers public involvement essential to its mission and goals. The department is committed to working with tribes in Alaska and with a diverse group of State and Federal agencies. The department works cooperatively with various universities and nongovernmental organizations in formal and informal partnership arrangements, and assists local research or baseline environmental monitoring through citizen science programs.
ExxonMobil Corporation is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is the largest direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, and was formed on November 30, 1999, by the merger of Exxon and Mobil. Both of its predecessors are used as brands for fueling stations and downstream products today, alongside Esso. The vertically-integrated company also has a chemical division, ExxonMobil Chemical, which produces plastic, synthetic rubber, and other chemical products. ExxonMobil is incorporated in New Jersey.
United States v. Locke, 529 U.S. 89 (2000), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court unanimously held that certain state regulations regarding oil tankers and oil barges are preempted under the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution in deference to the extensive body of federal regulations affecting these classes of vessels.
Uvavnuk was an Inuk woman born in the 19th century, now considered an oral poet. The story of how she became an angakkuq, and the song that came to her, were collected by European explorers of Arctic Canada in the early 1920s. Her shamanistic poem-song, best known as "Earth and the Great Weather", has been anthologised many times.
Charles Monnett, Ph.D. is an Arctic wildlife biologist with the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE), an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior that manages the nation's natural gas, oil and other mineral resources on the outer continental shelf (OCS).
Big Miracle is a 2012 drama film directed by Ken Kwapis, and stars Drew Barrymore and John Krasinski. The film is based on Tom Rose's 1989 book Freeing the Whales, which covers Operation Breakthrough, the 1988 international effort to rescue gray whales trapped in ice near Point Barrow, Alaska.
International Bird Rescue is a nonprofit organization that rehabilitates injured aquatic birds, most notably seabirds affected by oil spills. Founded by Alice Berkner and members of the Ecology Action, including veterinarian James Michael Harris, D.V.M. in 1971 and based in Cordelia, California, the group has developed scientifically-based bird rehabilitation techniques and has led oiled wildlife rescue efforts in more than 200 oil spills worldwide, including the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska, and the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, where International Bird Rescue co-managed oiled bird rehabilitation efforts in four states with Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research.
Riki Ott is a marine toxicologist and activist in Cordova, Alaska. Ott was frequently introduced as an "oil spill expert" in her many media appearances during the height of the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill news coverage. After graduating with a doctorate in sedimentary toxicology from the University of Washington, Ott moved to Alaska and started a fishing business. When the Exxon Valdez oil spill disrupted the local fishing-based economy, she became an environmental activist. Since the spill, she has participated in legal and public relations disputes with the Exxon company.
The Prince William Sound Regional Citizens' Advisory Council is an independent non-profit organization based in Anchorage and Valdez, Alaska, whose mission is to promote the environmentally-safe operation of the Alyeska Pipeline's Valdez Marine Terminal and associated oil tankers, and to inform the public of those activities.
Walter Bruce "Walt" Parker was an American civil servant, policy adviser, transportation adviser, academic and local politician. Parker's career focused on the development of natural resources, transportation and infrastructure in Alaska from the 1940s to the 2000s. In 1989, Alaska Governor Steve Cowper appointed Parker as the chairman of the Alaska Oil Spill Commission, which investigated the Exxon Valdez oil spill. He is credited with making important contributions to the fields of transportation, telecommunications, education, land use and urban planning within the state of Alaska. Parker was inducted into the Alaska Conservation Hall of Fame by the Alaska Conservation Foundation in 2002 for his contributions to state conservation.
John Robert Keeble is a Canadian-American author. Primarily a novelist, he is best known for his novel Yellowfish (1980) and Broken Ground (1987). He has also written short stories and nonfiction. In 2019, he won an O. Henry Award for his short story, "Synchronicity", which was published in Harper's Magazine.
