On Tuesday, researchers wrapped up a month-long cruise through the unusually warm waters of the Bering Sea. They’re investigating how the second year of a warming pattern is affecting the ecosystem, including the nation’s largest fishery, pollock.
Onboard the research vessel Oscar Dyson, a dozen scientists have been trading 12-hour shifts as the ship traced a grid over the eastern Bering Sea Shelf from Unimak Island up to about 60 degrees north.
Janet Duffy-Anderson is a research biologist with NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Centers. Her co-lead on the Bering Sea project is Phyllis Stabeno, an oceanographer at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory.
Stabeno explains at each stop, the ship’s researchers take both physical measurements — temperature, salinity, nutrients – and biological samples.
“So you pull in your last net, fish and everything comes in and you begin sorting them,” she says. “But the ship now is moving to the next station, takes about 2-3 hours to get to the next station. … So everybody is madly running all their samples so they can be ready to do this again.”
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