If you say Alaska, I think of…oil, salmon, deadliest catch, Sarah Palin. Yikes.

Here’s the view from the smallest airplane I have ever ridden in (OK, not exactly true but it felt small above the Alaskan wilderness).

But recently, OK, maybe a few months ago,  I was fortunate to make the trip up to Homer, AK to participate in a National Estuarine Research Reserve System (NERRS) workshop on……

…wait for it…..

Bivalves! Yay!!!!!

Specifically, restoring native bivalves and expanding the aquaculture of commercial oysters. Mmmmmm, oysters.

And here’s the pièce de résistance…Oregon oyster guru Steve Rumrill and I posing in front of the Time Bandit. Ecologists are so hard.