A glimpse of the sun rising in the morning over the Bering Sea is a rare sight.
Fog is the norm and, of course, water is the constant.
Chief scientist, Dr. Tom Weingartner is all about the water. A physical oceanographer and professor at University of Alaska-Fairbanks, Tom is leading the B.E.S.T….as in Bering Ecosystem Study. For over two years, Tom and his team have been monitoring the Bering Sea by sampling the sea everyday, every 30 minutes, in nine strategic locations.
Tom Weingartner (L) and our Senior Marine Tech, Ben Jokinen, (R) all smiles after a successful CTD(water sample)
The goal?
As stated in Dr. Weingartner’s cruise plan: The purpose of the BEST program is to understand how the Bering Sea shelf ecosystem will respond to an anticipated reduction in sea ice cover as a response to climate change. Toward this end this BEST cruise will recover moorings that will provide an understanding of the temporal variations in circulation, temperature, salinity, and fluorescence and stratification over the inner half of the central Bering Sea shelf.
Image courtesy of Dr. Tom Weingartner
Of course, if you have been following the blog a bit you know by now that I always want to know what that linear science speak means. My water crash course from Tom told me a bit about the bigger picture and how to frame it as a cook. It is all about salt, no salt, cold water and colder water, ice, mixing and, of course,food….as in nutrients.
This area in the Bering is feeding the most productive ocean on the planet, just north of St. Lawrence Island before the Bering Strait. This ocean is also one of the most profitable fisheries in the world and not just because of the t.v. stars known as crabs, but other tasty and useful treats such as pollock. Where would be without fish sticks? Nutrient rich water in the deep Bering basin feeds an ecosystem that generates an enormous aquatic food web from phytoplankton on up. Phytoplankton, through photosynthesis, produces as much oxygen in the earth’s atmosphere as plant life.
The water from melting ice is nutrient poor. Fresh water coming into the sea from river sources is also low in nutrients in the near-shore areas of the ocean. As ice melts at a higher rate and mixes with the fresh water, the combination will begin to effect the balance and the mixing of the nutrient rich water from the deep basin, therefore, potentially upsetting the balance of the food web and the production of oxygen. Chef’s disclaimer – I have to type potentially because this is my synopsis and not the conclusion of said research.
Another character to meet is Dave Leech who is the “BEST” mooring technician responsible for building, deploying and retrieving all these cool toys, errrh, I mean fine-calibrated scientific instruments. More soon……
