The best papers and posters from the AK meeting are listed below.

Each year two Best Paper Awards are given (one-AFS, one-Sea Grant).
The best papers were determined by a series of five "cuts" or winnowing
procedures.
(1) Judge indicated the paper was a serious candidate for an award
(2) Individual scores 84 and below were dropped (average score for all
presentations was 78)
(2) Evaluations without comments from the judges were removed
(3) Presentaions receiving negative comments were removed
(4) Presentations without redundancy were removed (there were still at
least two judges indicating the presentation was excellent)
(5) Scores of the remaining four presentations were used to determine
the two best and the two honorable mentions

Best Paper:
Beth Gardner, J. Patrick Sullivan, Stephen J. Morreale, and Sheryan P.
Epperly
CO-07-26 Spatio-temporal analyses of loggerhead seaturtle interactions
with pelagic fisheries

Best Paper:
Brandon J. Puckett, David H. Secor, and Se-Jong Ju
SO-26-13 Growth and recruitment rates of juvenile blue crabs in
Chesapeake Bay

Best Paper Honorable Mention
Katie Bertrand and Keith Gido
SO-31-11 Interactive effects of flood frequency and fishes on ecosystem
structure and function

Best Paper Honorable Mention
Brian Bellgraph, Christopher Guy, and Stephen Leathe
CO-11-24 Resource overlap between sauger and walleye in the Missouri
River, Montana: Implications for declining sauger populations

Best Poster was determined by three "cuts"
(1) First, the 20 posters with the highest mean/median scores were
determined (I emailed students asking for a PDF of their poster)
(2) There was considerable variation in the quality of these posters,
the scores were correlated with the number of evaluations received.
The number of evaluations of the individual posters ranged from one to
six. Each poster receiving the highest score relative to other posters
having the same number of evaluations, underwent further evaluation. A
single poster having six evaluations received several negative comments
and was dropped from the subset.
(3) The two posters ranked as best by further evaluation (the same four
judges had evaluated each of the posters in the final subset) were
selected as best poster and honorable mention.

Best Poster:
Cari-Ann Hayer, and Elise R. Irwin
CP-1-EEX-220 Effects of gravel mining on detection probabilities for
selected Mobile River Basin fishes

Poster Honorable Mention:
Donald Ratcliff, Wayne A. Wurtsbaugh, and Joseph Zustak
CP-1-EEX-070 Does grass bed planting stimulate the food web and juvenile
bass abundance in a drawdown reservoir?