The Gulf Watch Alaska (GWA) program and Principal Investigators (PIs) are persevering as we continue to endure the COVID-19 pandemic. Some projects have lost data collection opportunities for FY20 because of state or federal agency mandates. However, numerous projects have developed methods to safely conduct field studies and the majority of datasets will continue with only minor gaps. Oceanographic, nearshore, marine bird, and marine mammal surveys have been successfully conducted at some level, maintaining long-term curation of our legacy datasets. The array of remote sensing instruments supported by GWA and the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council has also become an invaluable source of information while PIs are grounded from fieldwork. During these challenging times the tenacity and ingenuity of GWA scientists and the value of their long-term monitoring efforts has become even more evident. Stay healthy everyone!

A brief summary of our program’s second quarter activities and accomplishment can be found in the latest issue of the GWA Quarterly Currents (vol 4.2).