John F. Piatt
John Piatt got hooked on seabirds in 1973 after spending a few nights on Gull Island, Newfoundland– site of the largest Leach’s Storm-petrel and Atlantic Puffin colony in the Northwest Atlantic. While he subsequently pursued an undergraduate degree in biochemistry, three summers in the 1970’s were spent working as a naturalist at Cape St. Mary’s gannetry, thereby cementing his love affair with seabirds. John switched his field of study to marine biology during the 1980s, and for his graduate program at Memorial University of Newfoundland he assessed the impacts of gill-net bycatch and oil pollution on seabirds, and then studied the behavioral ecology of Common Murre and Atlantic Puffin predation on capelin— the most abundant forage fish in the frigid waters of eastern Newfoundland.
Lured to Alaska in 1987 by the opportunity to study auklets at St. Lawrence Island, and still employed today by the Department of the Interior (USGS Alaska Science Center) in Anchorage, John has spent the past 29 years studying seabirds, forage fish and marine ecosystems throughout Alaska and the North Pacific. This included documenting the impact of the Exxon Valdez oil spill on seabirds, and examining how natural variability in forage fish communities affects the biology, behavior and physiology of seabirds at their colonies.
In more recent years, John conducted studies of oceanography, forage fish and birds in glacial-fjord ecosystems in the Gulf of Alaska and in passes of the Aleutian archipelago. John is an author on more than 250 published articles and agency reports, enjoying collaborations with a large number of colleagues around the globe. Among his professional activities, he has served as editor for The Auk and Marine Ecology Progress Series, as a graduate student advisor and affiliate professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland, the University of Washington and Oregon State University, as Chair of the Pacific Seabird Group, and as a science advisor to the North Pacific Research Board. John continues to be fascinated by the Auk family of seabirds, a passion shared by his wife, Nancy Naslund. John and Nancy (and until recent fledging, their six children) reside in Port Townsend, Washington, on the Flying Auk Ranch, alongside a menagerie of dogs, cats, birds, guinea pigs, rabbits, ducks, chickens and horses.
In recognition of his significant achievements and impacts in the fields of seabird ecology, fisheries science, and marine conservation, the Pacific Seabird Group honors John Piatt for over 25 years of scientific leadership, international collaboration, and the creation of the North Pacific Pelagic Seabird Database with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
