Michelle Ridgway: 1963-2018

Michelle Ridgway: 1963-2018

Michelle Ridgway

Dear Friends of Michelle, if you haven’t heard, Michelle passed on in the early hours of yesterday morning (01-03-2018).

She was the sole occupant of a single car accident Friday afternoon. The accident took place at 22 Mile Glacier Highway, north of Auke Bay, in Juneau. She was flown to Seattle for critical care treatment that evening, but died about 24 hours later.

For those who didn’t know her well (hard to imagine), she was an amazing marine biologist, contributing greatly to the body of knowledge about the Bering Sea. She was also a deep sea sub driver who discovered new marine species as well as a new, isolated canyon, with its own ecosystem, just off the Pribilof Canyon in the central Bering Sea.

Her favorite activities, other than exploring the world’s oceans and discovering their secrets, were sailing those oceans and teaching coastal children how to discover those secrets too. She was a fierce advocate for the marine life and peoples of the Bering Sea and North Pacific.
She was a founding member of the Alaska Marine Conservation Council, where she served for her entire three terms and she was the environmental representative to the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council’s Advisory Panel for (I think) seven years.

… and needless to say, she was and awesome and true friend. She gave generously and selflessly of her time and resources to each person she met, to make their world a better place to live in, so they could do the same for others. She was an inspiration.

She had done so much and survived so much, that I always thought I would see her again. Whenever we would depart each other’s company, for our “normal lives,” I would have this fleeting vision of us in our 70’s and 80’s laughing and looking back on all that we had done, filling in the details of adventures … no embellishments required.

You will be missed my dear friend … by me, your friends, your family and the world.
Love, thoughts and prayers … always.

With best wishes,
Mead Treadwell, North Pacific Alaska Chair

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