Science & Environment

William Wells lives and works at what may be the nation's most remote weather station. It's 300 miles off the west coast of Alaska (and 500 miles off the east coast of Siberia) in the Bering Sea. Even by St. Paul Island standards, his station is remote: it's off by itself, a few miles away from the village of 400 700 people who call St. Paul home.

Each afternoon, he walks from his office into a two-story-tall garage to fill up a six-foot-wide balloon with hydrogen gas.

Biologists and tribal officials in the Bering Sea off the west coast of Alaska are working to protect one of the world's greatest gatherings of seabirds. With a little unwilling help from wharf rats in Alaska's Dutch Harbor, the nation's busiest fishing port, they aim to keep rats as far away as Seattle from devouring the birds of the rat-free Pribilof Islands.

Mussels collected from Little Priest Rock in Unalaska this summer tested positive for high levels of toxins that cause paralytic shellfish poisoning, or PSP. That’s according to Melissa Good of the Alaska Sea Grant Marine Advisory Program.

Good said that throughout the summer, she’s been collecting blue mussels from Unalaska for analysis by the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. The last of the collection ended on September 30. Once the data is in and analyzed, Good promised to present a community lecture on her findings.