Little Port Walter Research Station

Overview

NOAA’s Little Port Walter Research Station was established in 1934 and is the oldest year-round biological field station in Alaska. The station is also the second rainiest place in North America, receiving an average of roughly 5.97 meters (235 inches) of precipitation per year. The station is located on the southeastern side of Baranof Island, approximately 140 kilometers south of Juneau, in a pristine and biologically strategic location (Latitude: 56.38 N, Longitude: 134.65 W) on U.S. Forest Service land in the Tongass National Forest. It is located on Chatham Strait near a major entrance to the inside waters of southeast Alaska and is just inshore from the Alaska Coastal Current. This location makes it possible to address a wide range of research questions and objectives. The station supports both seasonal and year-round research, with the onsite population ranging from two people in the winter up to 25 in the summer depending on research needs. To date, research here has resulted in 216 peer-reviewed scientific journal publications, as well as dozens of graduate student theses, technical memos, and annual reports. 

Facility

Little Port Walter Research Station comprises 11 buildings. The main building, built in the 1930s using Civilian Conservation Corps labor and materials from an abandoned saltery, is a three-story brick structure which is used as a dormitory/residence, laboratory, and mess hall. Other facilities include two wet laboratories, a warehouse, wood and metal shops, a conference room, a floating wet-lab and feed shed, several residences for researchers and maintenance staff, and a permanent concrete fish weir on nearby Sashin Creek, which flows into the head of the inner bay at the station.

Research

Research projects focus on salmon aquaculture, groundfish, mariculture, and long-term biological and environmental monitoring efforts in southeast Alaska. All projects support core goals of the Alaska Fisheries Science Center’s Strategic Science Plan. 

Data collected on salmon survival, run timing, growth, age composition, genetics, and environmental conditions from the past 48 years support the following projects:

• Mandates of the Pacific Salmon Treaty and management of Alaska's salmon fisheries
• Understanding risks of salmon hatcheries (a form of aquaculture) and ways to mitigate those risks
• Developing an ocean-type broodstock for Chinook salmon aquaculture in Southeast Alaska
• Using long-term data sets to characterize the impacts of climate change on survival and productivity of wild salmon populations

Groundfish research is focused on developing physiological and life history indices for fisheries management. To contribute to this long-term goal, we are developing innovative, cost-effective, and efficient approaches for measuring life history attributes of Pacific Cod and Walleye Pollock based on the chemical structure of fish tissues and hard parts inferred from spectroscopy.

We are also conducting mariculture pilot projects. In partnership with Pacific Hybreed, our researchers began testing the efficacy of oyster mariculture. They collected water samples to quantify phytoplankton abundance and diversity, and deployed experimental arrays of juvenile oysters in cages to track performance of different cage types and locations. In 2024, we will deploy a full cohort of Pacific oysters, with data collected from those oysters informing future crossbreeding designs.

Additional research over the years has ranged from hummingbird migration patterns to banana slug genetics, with recent adjacent projects focused on sunflower sea stars and chemical contaminants in nearshore waters.