A single mother working construction on the Alaska pipeline, Paula was struggling to pull her life back together when she met her second husband.

“I didn’t know one end of a salmon from the other,” Paula said. “But we both shared a love of adventure. Dick and I just decided we’d buy a permit, and we’d buy a boat, and we’d go fishing. And that’s what we did.”

Twenty-nine years later, they’re still fishing. Their months onshore are spent working to defend the fishing communities to which they’ve come to belong. For Paula, this means doing legislative outreach for the Alaska Marine Conservation Council, a group that works to sustain coastal ecosystems, to ensure that commercial fishing is possible for future generations.

“Don’t ask me when I became so interested in conservation issues because I can tell you that years ago I wasn’t at all,” she said. Indeed, the decision to work for an environmental group goes against the grain of many Alaskan fishermen.

In 1999, several national environmental groups secured the closure of Glacier Bay to commercial fishing, severing a previously amicable relationship between fishermen and environmentalists. Now, many Alaskan fishermen are highly skeptical of anyone from an environmental organization. Paula is working to repair this relationship. She is currently working to unite environmental and fishing groups in opposition to offshore fish farming and the federal proposal allow offshore oil and gas drilling in Bristol Bay.

“One of the reasons that I’m able to make headway is because I’m also a fisherman,” Paula said. “So, if I talk to fishermen, they know I’m not trying to shut them down.”

“If you have a coalition of fishing groups and both regional and local environmental groups and national environmental groups, that’s pretty powerful,” Paula continued. “It’s very difficult, but it can also be very rewarding, because people are listening to what fishermen have to say.”