Staff
Julia K. Parrish, Executive Director
Julia started her academic career as a starving artist, only dimly aware of organismal biology and natural history. However, as art is more difficult than science (!), Julia found herself (while still an undergrad) immersed in marine biology as a visiting student at the Duke University Marine Lab. Since then, it's been science, and particularly animal behavior and field biology, all the way. After coming to the University of Washington in 1990, Julia discovered conservation in the way that most field biologists do, by watching the organisms and habitats she had been working on, and in, disappear and degrade as a consequence of human activities. At the same time, Julia met many people who were watching local resources and ecosystems change, and wondering what to do about it. These experiences led her to create a program for citizens with a strong component of marine conservation, a foundation of basic science, and a healthy dose of enthusiastic teaching and outreach—the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team—of which she is Executive Director. Her current research focuses on physical, biological, and anthropogenic factors affecting coastal seabird population health in the North Pacific, including a long-term study of the Common Murres of Tatoosh Island. In addition to her research, Julia serves as the Associate Director of the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, and as the Director of the Program on the Environment.
Jane Dolliver, Volunteer Coordinator
Jane joined COASST in 2002 as an undergraduate intern. Starting with data entry, supply inventory, answering the COASST email, and fielding questions and comments from our participants, Jane quickly became the cheerful “voice” of COASST that everyone recognizes. Since then, Jane has assumed the job of data verification—making sure that each and every bird listed on a data sheet is, in fact, what it’s been identified as, a daunting task with over 4,000 entries annually across the program. Of course, this also puts her is the best position to put together the Breaking News, Quiz, and COASST People sections of COASST Reports, as well as take a leading role in putting together our newsletter COASSTLine. Well on her way to becoming an itinerant biologist, Jane has traveled to Chile to tag Pink-Footed Shearwaters, has spent countless hours on Tatoosh Island watching Common Murre parents bring fish—one at a time—to their chicks, and holds the record for number of continuous hours using our fiber-optic camera with head-mounted video display to spy on Rhinoceros Auklet chicks in the Protection Island burrows. As if this was not enough, Jane is also locally renowned in the Parrish lab—and in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences—for her baking prowess, and strives to make sure chocolate brownies are never in short supply.
Mary Sue Brancato, Volunteer Coordinator
Mary Sue Brancato works on a variety of water quality, benthic ecology and marine policy issues for the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary….and, of course, dead birds! She began working with COASST in 1998, when she joined the staff at the marine sanctuary, helping to develop the survey protocol and beta test the fledging field guide. She is an enthusiastic voice for the program, particularly enjoying that moment in training volunteers when they realize that they too, can learn to be great at identifying beached birds! Mary Sue is our Volunteer Coordinator for the North Coast and Strait of Juan de Fuca regions in Washington, where COASST first took its baby steps. COASST takes Mary Sue into the field year round, which is one of her favorite aspects of the program – getting to know a beach over the course of 9 years and seeing how it changes month to month. An equal passion was the life history of marine invertebrates, including the many way cool larval forms from veliger to zoea. This early work has grown into a range of marine biology and resource management duties for the Sanctuary. When not organizing a COASST social or taking another potential volunteer out to the outer coast, Mary Sue might be found working on deep-water corals, analyzing temperature and salinity data from the Sanctuary's moorings, or taking a break to hike mountain and coastal trails.