Mary Kapsner

Representative Mary Kapsner is a Yup’ik Eskimo from Bethel, Alaska. She is a member of the Alaska State Legislature, representing House District 38 in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. Her mother, Lizann, is from Kwethluk. Her father, Ward, came to Alaska as a teacher and commercial pilot. He raised his family in Kwethluk, Tuntutuliak, Platinum and Bethel. She has two sons, Conrad Qugpak and Van Mutaq.

Mary grew up fishing for subsistence and commercial salmon. During college she worked summers for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game as a herring and salmon technician. Previously she was an executive with Coastal Village Seafoods and she commercially fished in the late 1980s. Every year she works to put up fish for the coming year.

Mary started college with an eye toward an elementary education degree. After working one legislative session in Juneau as a Legislative Intern, she re-focused her energies on political issues facing rural Alaska. In 1998 she was elected to the State House of Representatives.

In the Alaska Legislature Mary has served on the House Resources Committee, Special Committee on Fisheries, Health, Education and Social Services Committee, Special Committee on Education, Transportation Committee, and the Legislative Ethics Committee. She has been a member of the budget subcommittees for the Departments of Corrections and Public Safety. She chairs the House Bush Caucus and serves on the Governor's Task Force on Rural Sanitation, the Statewide Suicide Prevention Council, and the Kuskokwim Economic Development Council.

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Tony Gharrett

Tony Gharrett is Professor of Genetics in the School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Tony earned his BS at CalTech and his MS and PhD at Oregon State. He's been at the Juneau Center for Fisheries and Ocean Sciences since its formation in the mid 1970's and has had visiting faculty appointments at the University of Michigan, Hokkaido University and Kitasato University. He's published over 60 papers on fisheries genetics on topics ranging from population genetic structure to evolution to adaptive variation in fish populations; he works on diverse species ranging from Pacific salmon to rockfish. Tony advises grad students and  teaches courses in Genetics,  Fisheries Genetics, and Fisheries Conservation Biology and can count a sizable list of former students among fishery scientists around the Pacific rim.

Tom Quinn

Tom Quinn did his graduate work at the University of Washington and received his PhD in 1981 for work on the use of the earth's magnetic field for orientation by sockeye salmon. He then worked for the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans at the Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo, studying various aspects of salmon migratory behavior, and then joined the faculty of the University of Washington in 1986. Since then he has conducted research on diverse aspects of the behavior, ecology and evolution of salmon and trout, including the evolution of chinook salmon in New Zealand, the mechanisms and patterns of homing and straying, spawning behavior, bear predation, and interactions between wild and hatchery fish. He recently completed a book on "The Behavior and Ecology of Pacific Salmon and Trout", co-published by the University of Washington Press and the American Fisheries Society.
 

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