Unalaska, AK – The Alaska Sea Grant program is looking for your help in charting the program's course in the Aleutian Islands.

The federally funded program, which is run out of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, is asking members of Aleutian communities to fill out a survey on its website that will help set research priorities in the region for the next few years.

Alaska Sea Grant Director Brian Allee said the program is making an effort to look at research needs besides commercial fisheries, which usually drive research funding priorities in Alaska's oceans. He said that while Sea Grant is soliciting ideas from the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, it also wants to hear about other interests in coastal communities.

"Our effort is meant as a multi-disciplinary effort where we would be looking beyond just the fisheries resource per se, and trying to develop a better understanding of research needs in the marine environment that aren't just exclusively associated with fisheries," he said.

Allee said this approach led to one of Sea Grant's biggest current projects, a crab hatchery program in Seward. The project is targeting Kodiak red king crab and Pribilof blue king crab populations in an effort to find out why stocks in those areas haven't rebounded over the past 20 years.

Alaska Sea Grant is part of the National Sea Grant Program, which works with universities across the country's coastal regions to fund education and research projects. The Alaska program spends about $2.2 million a year, and funds UAF's Marine Advisory Program extension office in Unalaska.

You can take the survey by going to the Alaska Sea Grant website. People who complete it will be entered in a drawing to win a $200 shopping spree in the Alaska Sea Grant Bookstore.