ACTIVE PROJECTS North_Bering_Sea U.S. Representation to the International Arctic Science Committee
Bering Ecosystem Study (BEST) and Bering Sea Integrated Ecosystem Research Program (BSIERP) Shell Oil
Chukchi Sea Offshore Monitoring in Drilling Area (COMIDA) US-Russia Census of the Arctic (RUSALCA)
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Bering Ecosystem Study (BEST) and Bering Sea Integrated Ecosystem Research Program (BSIERP). We are involved in both the BEST (supported by the National Science Foundation) and BSIERP programs (supported by the North Pacific Research Board) starting in 2008. General information on these two linked programs is available at a web site supported by the North Pacific Research Board: http://bsierp.nprb.org/index.htm.
Our efforts in 2008 and 2009 included the participation of our research team on three cruises of the USCGC Healy (March 2008; April-May 2008, and March 2009) and a cruise of the Canadian Coast Guard Service Sir Wilfrid Laurier (July 2008). We are studying the response of organisms that live in or on the sediments on the shallow sea floor of the continental shelf to the decline of seasonal sea ice. Warming water temperatures are leading to a northward migration of fish and other predators into the northern Bering Sea, where they are competing for some for some of the same food resources that walruses, gray whales, bearded seals, eiders and other ice-associated or ice-adapted animals use. These animals dive to the seafloor to feed on the rich benthic communities. As ice edge phytoplankton blooms become less prominent as the sea ice declines or retreats earlier in the spring, it is likely that the transport of rich organic materials to the shallow sea floor will be altered and the food web changed. We are studying the boundary of this south to north transition from a fish-dominated food web in the Bering Sea to a benthic dominated system in the north as our part of this much larger program that involves scientists from throughout the United States and other countries. Studies of the distributions of walruses in the Bering Sea in relation to food resources are part of our cooperative studies with other researchers as well as epibenthic surveys we undertook on cruises this year with an underwater video system.
Education and Other Information Links: Anchorage teacher Craig Casemodel's log from our Healy 08-01 cruise (PolarTREC site)
J.C. Parks Elementary School (Indian Head, Maryland) teacher Deanna Wheeler's log from our Healy 09-01 cruise (PolarTREC site)
ABC News Good Morning America Weekend feature on teacher Deanna Wheeler's experience
Healy 09-01 cruise log maintained by the North Pacific Research Board (http://bsierp.nprb.org/fieldwork/2009/healy_0901_log.html)
Plenty Magazine Article on Walrus Tagging and Bering Sea Change (.pdf file)
Cruise report from Healy 08-01 (.pdf file) Walrus tagging efforts from Alaska News Nightly (Public Radio .mp3 file)
Video clips of Bering and Chukchi Sea bottom (20 MB, Quicktime .mov format)
Cruise report from Healy 09-01 (.pdf file)
Baltimore Sun article on Healy 09-01 (.pdf file)
On Thin Ice Blogs from Healy 09-01 (http://www.ipy.org/index.php?/ipy/content/ipyblogs/0/0/0/thinice) by Thomas Litwin (Smith College) and Tom Walker (writer, photographer, Denali, Alaska)
On Thin Ice Vodcasts (video podcasts) hosted by Public TV NOVA series and WGBH in Boston http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/extremeice/thinice.html
Filmed in part on Healy 08-01. "On Thin Ice in the Bering Sea" is a production of Florentine Films/Hott Productions, Inc. in association with the Clark Science Center at Smith College. Produced by Lawrence R. Hott and Tom Litwin.
Encounters North Podcast recorded on Healy cruise 09-01 by Elizabeth Arnold (.mp3 format) http://encountersnorth.org/audio_files/Encounters_Ice_Algae.mp3
Nature's Edge Podcast (ABC News) recorded on Healy cruise 09-01 (.mpeg-4 video)
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"Climate-driven changes in impacts of benthic predators in the northern Bering Sea" is a our National Science Foundation supported project that is continuing work we have accomplished over the past two decades studying biological changes in the northern Bering Sea. In this project, we have focused our work on declining benthic biological productivity and changes in benthic population structure, and resulting impacts on higher trophic levels, including declining populations of a threatened sea duck, the spectacled eider. A key goal is to understand changes in biological communities that appear to be occurring as sea ice continues to retreat in this system.
Working with our collaborator, Jim Lovvorn, University of Wyoming, and a research team of approximately 30 scientists from the University of Tennessee, University of Wyoming, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, the University of Virginia, the College of William and Mary, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the National Marine Mammal Laboratory and the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, we have completed more than three months of shipboard work in the Bering Sea in May-June 2006, July 2006, May-June 2007 and July 2007 aboard the USCGC Healy and Canadian Coast Guard Service Sir Wilfrid Laurier. A local community resident of Savoonga, Alaska, Mr. Perry Pungowiyi, was also able to join us in 2006, 2007 and 2008 on Healy. A report of his 2006 cruise observations prepared for the local Saint Lawrence Island Yupik communities (Savoonga and Gambell) is available at this link.
"Panel Limits Northern Bering Sea Bottom Trawling" or download pdf version. Copy of article from the Anchorage Daily News describing new limits placed on northern Bering Sea trawling in June 2007. Principal investigators Cooper, Grebmeier and Lovvorn wrote a letter transmitted off the ship to the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council supporting protection of the rich benthic communities of the northern Bering Sea from industrial trawling.
Polar bear seen from ship while sampling in Barrow Canyon (Video Quicktime .mov format)
Walruses on ice in Barrow Canyon (Video, Quicktime .mov format)
Other Public Outreach Products Explaining Our Research, Including Video and Sound-only Podcasts
Educators Patty Janes (left) and Sam Barlow, both participants in the TREC (now PolarTREC program) onboard Healy. Port of Dutch Harbor and community of Unalaska in background. Patty Janes's website at: Scholastic Magazines - www.scholastic.com/globalwarming
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U.S. Representation to the International Arctic Science Committee
Jackie Grebmeier is the U.S. representative to the the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) and also serves on the organization's Executive Board as Vice-President. IASC is a nongovernmental, international organization with the mission of encouraging, facilitating, and promoting the full range of basic and applied research in the Arctic, "encouraging cooperation and integration of human, social, and natural sciences concerned with the Arctic at a circumarctic or international level and providing scientific advice on arctic issues." The IASC Secretariat is based in Potsdam, Germany. IASC is a scientific associate of the International Council for Science and has observer status with the Arctic Council, a high-level forum for cooperation, coordination and interaction among the eight Arctic states, as well as indigenous communities and other Arctic residents. U.S. participation in IASC is coordinated by the Polar Research Board, a unit of the U.S. National Academy of Science. More information on U.S. participation in the organization is available on the IASC-USA website.
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Shell Exploration & Production Co. Benthic Sampling Program in the Chukchi Sea - Alaska
We are assisting Shell Oil and Production Co. by characterizing benthic ecological communities in an area leased by the U.S. Minerals Management Service (box on map below) for oil and gas exploration to the northwest of Alaska. Research efforts in 2008 and 2009 included a research cruise with collections of sediments, organisms, plankton, as well as video images of seafloor epifaunal communities. Research efforts continue now in the laboratory to process these samples. These data will also used with cooperating scientists studying summer distributions of walruses.
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Chukchi Sea Offshore Monitoring in Drilling Area (COMIDA)
COMIDA is the new Minerals Management Service program we are participating in with an initial field program in July-August 2009, with goals of open-water season monitoring of anthropogenic chemicals associated with offshore oil and gas exploration in the Chukchi Sea, evaluation of changes in benthic biota, sediment chemistry analysis, and providing for geostatistical modeling of spatial and temporal trends using geographical information system technology. Besides the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (Lee Cooper, Jackie Grebmeier and Rodger Harvey) our other partners include scientists from the University of Texas at Austin, the Florida Institute of Technology, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Our fieldwork in 2009 includes use of the venerable RV Alpha Helix, now based in Seattle, but originally built for the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and also operated for many years by the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
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US-Russia Census of the Arctic (RUSALCA)
RUSALCA is a NOAA-sponsored program to document the long-term ecosystem health of the Pacific Arctic Ecosystem, particularly as changes are observed in climate forcing. A centerpoint of the work are periodic research cruises that visit both US and Russian waters to provide for comprehensive sampling irrespective of political or exclusive economic zone boundaries. Our work is particularly focused on benthic biological communities and associated sediment chemistry. Work by researchers at other US and Russian institutions is studying other components of the ecosystem. Some of our findings from the 2004 cruise that show decadal changes in organic carbon processing have recently been published in Deep-Sea Research II (see http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dsr2.2008.10.025)
An international cruise is now underway in September 2009 in the Chukchi Sea aboard the M/V Professor Khromov, with participants Jackie Grebmeier and Betty Carvellas. Public reports on the cruise and scientific activities are available at http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/09arctic/welcome.html. The Reuters News Agency is reporting/blogging from the ship and Betty Carvellas is also providing a blog of research activities.
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SELECTED COMPLETED PROJECTS (with archived information saved as a public service; use caution with possibly outdated information, addresses, links)
Shelf-Basin Interactions---SBI Russian American Initiative for Land-Shelf Environments (RAISE)
Web page development by Lee Cooper (past work also by Kim Harmon, now with Office of Environmental Safety and Health, University of Tennessee, Knoxville)
