In a typhoon’s wake at WAISC

Ex-Typhoon Halong played itself out in the northern stretches of the Bering Sea more than six months ago. But the storm’s continuing power was evident at the 2026 Western Alaska Interdisciplinary Science Conference (WAISC) in Bethel, which drew a record number of participants in part because of Halong’s outsized impact.

“I think Halong is just very much a new paradigm in environmental change and how it can impact the community and region,” said Davin Holen, coastal community resilience specialist for Alaska Sea Grant. “It’s something that was unprecedented. Halong drove a lot of the interest on the part of both community members and on the part of scientists who are thinking not just that this is an interesting research question, but also ‘what can I do?’”

Bethel is a hub community located on the Kuskokwim River about 50 miles inland from where Halong slammed into the Bering Sea Coast, decimating two villages and significantly damaging a dozen others. It displaced 1,600 people, some of whom were among the first to speak at the event, sharing sometimes-harrowing experiences of the storm as well as Yup’ik perspectives on weather prediction and environmental change. 

“A person who pays attention in life will learn the signs that tell you when a storm is going to come,” said David John, a Yup’ik Elder from Kwigillingok, which was largely destroyed by Halong. “Today it’s so important that we tell our children about those teachings.”

The centering of Indigenous narrative might seem unusual for a scientific gathering, but WAISC is not a typical science conference. The annual event, which is organized by Alaska Sea Grant, rotates among off-the-road-system Western Alaska communities, including Dillingham, Nome, Bethel, Unalaska, Kotzebue and Naknek. Subject matter at the conference is dictated by local relevance rather than scientific discipline. The goal of the event is to foster knowledge exchange and collaborations between researchers and residents of these remote areas. 

“Sometimes researchers come in and then they don’t report back to communities, and so it was really cool to provide a platform for that sharing to happen. I was impressed with the researchers who took advantage of that opportunity and sent abstracts in,” said Katie Basile, Alaska Sea Grant’s Bethel-based coastal resilience specialist and the event’s chief organizer. “That’s what science is for, it’s for all of us to learn more, to be more resilient, and understand our world better.”

This year’s presenters included traditional academics but also people like Yup’ik Elders, health professionals, high-school and middle-school students, and even a quartet of local birders. Sessions covered an eclectic range of topics, from environmental change in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta to fisheries policies, harmful algal blooms, energy solutions and public health.

WAISC speaker Rick Thoman, a meteorologist with the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Preparedness, said he considers it his favorite conference by far, in part because of the diversity of offerings. “Because the location moves around the focus is always a little different,” he said. “And it’s always very interdisciplinary, so it’s not just a bunch of science talks like so many conferences.” 

The structure and content of this year’s event owed a great deal to Basile, who was born and raised in Bethel and made sure the focus at WAISC stayed local. A traditional dance group opened the conference, area vendors sold crafts during poster sessions, Alaska Native-inspired foods were on the menu, and attendees were invited to bring potluck items to snack breaks. 

The 2026 conference drew more than 160 people, the most since the events began in 2008. While some conferencegoers were local, most came from Anchorage or Fairbanks, and others from the Lower 48 and as far as Europe. Many were making their first visit to rural Alaska, and took the opportunity to learn about the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in situ, whether by attending field trips and workshops or by dodging spring puddles to explore Bethel’s sprawling web of neighborhoods. Attendee Renee Fredericks, who grew up in the area, noted that exposing conferencegoers to realities like aboveground plumbing and $6.65/gallon gas is an effective way to drive home the challenges of rural Alaska.

“When I used to write grants, you’d have to try to write as much as you could to get people in D.C. to understand what you’re asking for,” said Fredericks, who works for the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium in Anchorage. “If people could come here and see the problems that we’re talking about it would be so much more impactful. They would get it.”