Journey to the Middle of the Bering Sea—Adventures in St Paul

Saint Paul Island is a place very few Americans, even Alaskans, will ever visit in their lifetimes. It is the breeding grounds for more than 500,000 northern fur seals and millions of seabirds, and is surrounded by one of the world’s richest fishing grounds. The island has the largest Aleut community in the United States.

Jenna Malek, a co-management fellow with the Marine Mammal Commission, recently traveled to Saint Paul and wrote about her experience. Read Malek’s blog on her visit to the island.

Malek earned her PhD in 2015 from the Odum School of Ecology at the University of Georgia. She worked for the Commission’s Alaska communications team in 2016 as a Sea Grant Knauss Marine Policy Fellow. Malek wrote a grant proposal for funding through the North Pacific Research Board to conduct a review of marine mammal co-management in Alaska. Her proposal was funded in July 2017 and she returned to the Commission in January 2018. For the duration of the project she is based in Anchorage at the Alaska Sea Grant office. She is collaborating with Alaska Native communities and federal agencies to review co-management of marine mammal subsistence species.

The Marine Mammal Commission is an independent government agency charged by the Marine Mammal Protection Act to further the conservation of marine mammals and their environment