Home Page | George Divoky George Divoky Research Associate, Institute of Arctic Biology, UAF Dr. George Divoky only returned from his most recent research trip to the Arctic in mid-August 2009. For more than 30 years, studying the Black Guillemots of Cooper Island has largely been a solitary venture for this adventurous ornithologist. While the early years of the study were part of government research related to oil development in northern Alaska, for the past three decades the work has been conducted only with occasional grants and much personal dedication. Yet it is precisely this type of extended data set that is needed to monitor the long-term cycles and trends related to climate change and other atmospheric variation. Divoky, in some ways, is the "Charles David Keeling of biology", with research rivaling the 50 plus years recording of the gradual increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. George first went to Cooper merely expecting to study an interesting bird species. But as the sea ice broke up and birds arrived earlier each year, as invasive species such as puffins ventured farther North as climate warmed, and especially as more and more polar bears visited the island in search of food - both birds and George! - as their hunting grounds on stable sea ice became more fragile, he realized he was seeing the incontrovertible effects of climate change. George is founder of the "Friends of Cooper Island", a non-profit scientific organization, and serves as its director. George and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where he is a Research Associate at the Institute of Arctic Biology. A primary goal of "Friends of Cooper Island" is to compile, preserve and distribute Cooper Island research for use by current and future researchers studying climate change and other Arctic phenomena. The organization is developing educational and public outreach programs for children and adults. (For more on George, please see one of the best articles ever written on a scientific researcher, Darcy Frey's cover story in the New York Times Magazine.)