Introduction
The Pledge
"BANG! BANG! BANG!" I shoot up, heart beating wildly. It is 7:15 A.M. on 24 March 1989. Someone is pounding on the front door! I race downstairs, barefoot in my nightgown, and throw open the door to find Jack Lamb, acting president of Cordova District Fishermen United (CDFU).
"How long will it take you to get dressed?"
"Five minutes. Why?"
"We've had the Big One. There's a tanker aground on Bligh Reef. It's lost ten million gallons, but there's four times that still on board."
We stare into each other's eyes for a moment, then I gaze past him up Orca Inlet and across Hawkins Island to the northwest. For an instant my mind goes blank, then a tidal wave of emotion floods back in--denial, a hot white flame of anger, a surge of adrenaline, a cascade of ideas.
"I'll get dressed. You start a fire." In ten minutes, we are headed to the CDFU office. During the day, the fire slowly burned out.
It would be a week--and a lifetime--before I returned.
Within the hour, I catch a ride with bush pilot Steve Ranney out to the Sound. I leave Jack Lamb with executive director Marilyn Leland at the CDFU office where they are calling fishermen to get a fleet together to go help. Their voices swirl in my head: "…ten million gallons… Exxon Valdez… midnight… alcohol may be involved…."
Ten million gallons of oil in our beautiful Sound.
Steve Ranney is flying local scientist Chuck Monnett to conduct an aerial sea otter survey before the oil spreads. Just past Knowles Head we spot the stricken tanker at the apex of a black stain on the deep blue waters. We count 130 sea otters and 30 sea lions tucked along the rugged shorelines of islands and bays and several concentrated groups of porpoise and sea birds, but see little else.
We fly to Valdez to refuel and I call the CDFU office. Jack Lamb asks me to stay in Valdez to re lay information and represent the fishermen's interests until CDFU forms a response plan. I set up the fishermen's first command post at the Valdez U-Drive rental office at the airport.
Valdez airport, 11 A.M. The atmosphere is charged. People arrive in droves with each plane: black-suited, grim-faced Exxon officials; scientists lugging field gear and computers; reporters bristling with cameras and clipboards. Reporters latch onto me ("Dr. Ott"), drag me outside, and stuff cameras into my face. My camera etiquette is terrible--we repeat sequences until the cameramen are satisfied.
Finally, dazed and overwhelmed, I slip alone outside to think. The din of air traffic recedes as my gaze fixes on the white peaks of the Chugach Mountains, sparkling against the bright blue sky. A question forms in my mind: I know enough to make a difference, but do I care enough for the Sound to commit my life to this?
* * * * *
Suddenly the Chugach Mountains vanish and I am back in Wisconsin, watching myself at thirteen as I stand in front of our dining room window with my father and two younger siblings. My father's face is etched with sorrow as state trucks drive up our street spraying great white sweet-smelling clouds of DDT.
My life streams forward like a fast flowing river. There is the blank stare of a robin in my cupped hands--the bird is dying from the neurotoxin DDT. The adolescent girl is reading Rachael Carson's Silent Spring to try to understand what is happening in the adult world. My father galvanizes people to action. The Environmental Defense Fund biologist and lawyer are working at our dining room table, organizing their arguments for court. Wisconsin bans DDT that year, 1968, and the rest of the nation follows suit in 1972 (Rogers 1990) as the young woman heads off for college to become a marine biologist--like Rachael Carson.
A path unfolds for me to study marine pollution--oil pollution--from the decks of research vessels in different oceans, from labs in Bermuda, England, Malta, the Carolinas, and Washington State. Thirteen years, five colleges and universities, and three degrees later, including a master's in marine biology and oil pollution from the University of South Carolina and a doctorate in fisheries and marine toxicology from the University of Washington, I hesitate and look north to Alaska.
There is Prince William Sound as I first saw it--from the deck of a fishing boat in early May. The air is alive with the sight and sounds of birds--sea ducks, puffins, gulls, murrelets, cormorants, gulls, bald eagles. The water is alive with sea otters, porpoise, seals, and sea lions. The land is a soul-feast of rugged snow-capped mountains, glaciers stretching to the sea, and a thick ribbon of spruce-hemlock rainforest at the water's edge.
I see my resolve to take just one summer off from my imagined career vanish instantly upon my first glimpse of the coastal fishing town of Cordova. I am in love. I am a commercial fisherman, pulling silvery salmon from the sea on the Copper River Delta, in Prince William Sound, in the wind and waves, in the adrenaline-rushing breakers, in the gentle cradle-rocking calm, in the lashing rain, under a searing sun, under a luminous moon, under the northern lights. I am a fisherman, but I am feeling guilty about not using my education.
It is fall 1987 and I am on the boards of CDFU and United Fishermen of Alaska, picking up where other fishermen before me left off--a seamless handoff. I am working on chronic air and water pollution problems that plague the tanker terminal in Port Valdez, our fishing ground (Ott 1989b). I can see what is wrong and how to fix it to stop the pollution, but the fixes are elusive.
I am learning about politics in Alaska where 85 percent of the state's operating revenue flows from the 800-mile long Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) that delivered 25 percent of the nation's domestic oil from the North Slope to the tankers in Port Valdez. I am becoming a player in this drama that intersects lives of ordinary citizens with state and federal regulators, politicians, and scientists; oil industry scientists; the U. S. Coast Guard; the seven oil company owners and their consortium, Alyeska, that operates the TAPS.
It is spring 1989. I am in Juneau, Alaska; Washington, DC; then Dallas, Texas, warning politicians, oilmen, and federal agencies of the high risk of an oil spill in Prince William Sound.
It is the evening of 23 March, sixteen hours ago. I am speaking by teleconference to the Mayor's Oil Action Committee in Valdez.
"Given the high frequency of tankers into Port Valdez, the increasing age and size of that tanker fleet, and the inability to quickly contain and cleanup an oil spill in open water of Alaska, fishermen feel that we are playing a game of Russian roulette. When, not if, 'The Big One' does occur and much or all of the income from a fishing season is lost, compensation for processors, support industries and local communities will be difficult if not impossible to obtain…" (Ott 1989a).
I wake up to find fishermen's worst fears realized--"The Big One" has happened in Prince William Sound.
* * * * *
And suddenly the Chugach Mountains are straight in front of me again. This cannot be an accident that I am here now. I realize that choosing to become involved will change my life forever--it will become my life. In the deafening silence, I find my answer. Yes, I care enough. I will not turn my back on the Sound.
With a roar, my womb of silence cracks and the sounds of disaster response flood back. With new resolve, I step back into chaos.
