Bering Sea IERP Science Team Members
Melanie Brown (NOAA, fisheries mgmt)
Two Crow (Consultant, physics and ecosystem)
Diana Evans (NPFMC, fisheries)
Jackie Grebmeier (UT, climate, pelagic-benthic coupling)
Jeff Napp (AFSC, biological oceanography)
Jennifer Sepez (AFSC/UW, anthropology)
Glenn van Blaricom (UW, marine mammals)
melanie.brown@noaa.gov
twocrow@gilanet.com
Diana.Evans@noaa.gov
jgrebmei@utk.edu
jeff.napp@noaa.gov
jennifer.sepez@noaa.gov
glennvb@u.washington.edu
Science Panel member representatives:
John Piatt (john_piatt@usgs.gov)
Mike Dagg (mdagg@lumcon.edu)
Vera Alexander (vera@sfos.uaf.edu)
Short Biographies of ST members
Melanie Brown
Melanie Brown is a Fisheries Management Specialist with the Sustainable Fisheries Division,
Alaska Region, NMFS. She had held this position since August 2000. Prior to working with
NMFS, Melanie was employed with the Environmental Protection Agency as an Environmental
Scientist. She received her B.S. Degree from Ohio State University in Natural Resources
Science; she also completed graduate level coursework in ecological engineering at the Colorado
School of Mines.
Melanie currently is staff coordinator for the development of biological assessments supporting
section 7 consultations under the Endangered Species Act and associated rulemaking involving
refinements to Steller sea lion protection measures as new information becomes available. She
also is project coordinator for federal rulemaking underway to implement North Pacific Fishery
Management Council recommendations for the establishment of Essential Fish Habitat and
associated fishery mitigation measures. Melanie contributes to NEPA analyses supporting the
annual harvest specifications for the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands Area and Gulf of Alaska
groundfish fisheries. Her involvement with these projects requires a good working knowledge of
the management programs implemented to regulate the federal fisheries off Alaska, as well as the
application of the best available science to the management of these fisheries.
Two Crow (AKA J.D. SCHUMACHER)
Since the early 1970’s, Two Crow (AKA J.D. Schumacher) has conducted research and
contributed to development of fishery oceanography programs for the Bering Sea. After 13 years
as Program Director of Fisheries Oceanography Coordinated Investigations (FOCI) at the Pacific
Marine Environmental Lab (PMEL/NOAA), he formed his own consulting firm that has
continued his involvement with ecosystem studies in Alaskan waters since 1998. In the past three
years Two Crow has been on two National Research Council (NRC) committees, helped in the
development of two science plans, served as Guest Editor for two special publications, was an
author on three publications, helped develop and served as Scientific Advisor to the Alaska
Ocean Observing System (AOOS) among other activities.
Diana Evans
Diana Evans graduated from the University of California, Berkeley (B.A. Geography and
Linguistics), and received her M.S. in Geography from King’s College London, University of
London, U.K, in 1998. She has worked as NEPA specialist and fishery analyst for the North
Pacific Fishery Management Council since 2002, and is currently the staff representative to the
Council’s ecosystem committee. She previously worked as a consultant on fishery environmental
impact statements for National Marine Fisheries Service in Alaska and Hawaii.
Jackie Grebmeier
Jackie Grebmeier's oceanographic research interests are related to pelagic-benthic coupling,
benthic carbon cycling, and benthic faunal population structure in the marine environment. Over
the last 20 years, her field research program in both the Arctic and Antarctic has focused on such
topics as understanding how water column processes influence biological productivity in Arctic
waters and sediments, how materials are exchanged between the sea bed and overlying waters,
and documenting longer-term trends in ecosystem health of Arctic continental shelves. Some of
her research projects have included analyses of the importance of benthic organisms to higher
levels of the Arctic food web, including walrus, gray whale, and diving sea ducks, and studies of
radionuclide distributions in sediments and within the water column in the Arctic as a whole. In
other work, she has studied the influence of oceanographic processes on benthic communities in
Antarctica, chemical exchange at hydrothermal vents systems in the equatorial eastern Pacific
Ocean, and the transport and fate of materials in melted snow in Arctic tundra in the Brooks
Range foothills.
Jackie has served on a number of advisory committees to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences,
Polar Research Board, and the National Science Foundation. She also currently acts as project
office director for a National Science Foundation global change research project on Shelf-Basin
Interactions (SBI). The SBI project is multidisciplinary, involving a number of different
university researchers across the United States, and it is linked to other international scientific
research across the circumpolar Arctic. The project goals are to evaluate how projected global
changes in temperature, sea ice coverage, and oceanographic processes may influence the
exchange of materials between Arctic shelves and deep water basins, and what larger impacts
these changes will have on Arctic communities specifically and human society in general.
Jeffrey Napp
Jeff Napp is the Leader of the Recruitment Processes Program at the Alaska Fisheries Science
Center. He co-directs with Phyllis Stabeno, NOAA’s North Pacific Climate Regimes and
Ecosystem Productivity (NPCREP) project and the Fisheries Oceanography Coordinated
Investigations (FOCI). He is also an Affiliate Associate Professor at the School of Oceanography
at the University of Washington. Jeff has been extensively involved in research in the Bering Sea
(BS FOCI, SEBSCC, NPCREP) and Gulf of Alaska (FOCI, GLOBEC), and currently writes a
semi-annual article on the status of the Bering Sea Ecosystem for the PICES Press and was a
guest editor for the 2002 special issue of Progress in Oceanography dedicated to the Bering Sea
ecosystem . He currently serves on the science steering committee for BEST. His areas of
expertise are climate-mediated bottom-up forcing of lower trophic levels and recruitment
mechanisms of fish populations.
Jennifer Sepez
Jennifer Sepez is an anthropologist at NOAA Fisheries' Alaska Fisheries Science Center and an
affiliate Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Washington. She is responsible
for directing and conducting research on people and communities involved in North Pacific
fisheries. Her research has focused on subsistence and commercial fisheries in North America,
and traditional environmental knowledge in locations from Mexico to Alaska. She has also
worked extensively on human interactions with marine mammals, from fishing to hunting to
tourism. Her doctorate in Environmental Anthropology from the University of Washington
analyzed the political and social ecologies of the Makah Tribe's subsistence hunting and fishing
practices. She formerly served as an editorial assistant at the Journal of Ethnobiology and is a
member of the Social Science Steering Committee for the Bering Ecosystem Study Program. She
also spent three seasons working in an Alaskan fish processor and three years conducting
commercial fisheries research and oil spill impact research with the Alaska Department of Fish
and Game. Recent publication topics include the use of traditional environmental knowledge in
natural resource management agencies, historical ecology of Makah subsistence, demographics of
Alaska commercial fishing crew, and methodological issues in profiling and classifying fishing
communities.
Glenn van Blaricom
Glenn van Blaricom is a professor at School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of
Washington. His research focuses on population and community ecology and conservation
biology, primarily in coastal marine ecosystems of the North Pacific Rim and Arctic Alaska. All
his work emphasizes empirical studies with a strong field component and involves collaboration
with agencies and organizations under the auspices of the Washington Cooperative Fish and
Wildlife Research Unit (WACFWRU). Formal WACFWRU cooperators or partners include the
Biological Resources Division of the U.S. Geological Survey, the Washington (State)
Departments of Fish and Wildlife, Ecology, and Natural Resources, the School of Aquatic and
Fishery Sciences and the College of Forest Resources at the University of Washington, the
Department of Natural Resource Sciences at Washington State University, and other
organizations. WACFWRU gives highest priority to projects that respond to informational needs
of the cooperators, and that provide professional training for students interested in understanding
natural resources. Projects may focus on state, regional, national, or international issues of
significance in management of marine fish and wildlife populations, ecosystems, and habitats.
Since 1977, Glenn has studied the community ecology of sea otters in coastal marine habitats of
California, Washington, Alaska, and Russia. More recently, he has focused on trophic ecology of
a number of coastal marine mammal species, including Steller and California sea lions, harbor
seals, humpback whales, belugas, orcas, and sea otters. All recent projects have strong conceptual
and practical linkages to conservation biology.