upcoming events

28-30 March Bering Sea Project Principal Investigator meeting, Anchorage, AK; details forthcoming...

For more information about upcoming events, or if you'd like to add a relevant event, please contact Tom Van Pelt.

recently featured

7-9 February Zooplankton/carbon flux NSF Synthesis project workshop, Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences.
24 February deadline for manuscript submission for 2nd Bering Sea Project special issue
19-24 February 2012 Ocean Sciences Meeting, Salt Lake City, UT.
Bering Sea Project webinar in the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy series, presented by Mike Sigler (September 2011; link to Vimeo movie)
Implications of a colder Bering Sea explained in KDLG-Dillingham radio interview (December 2010)
Bering Sea Project featured in Nature (November 2010)

Find all news items here.

Welcome to the
Bering Sea Project

Marine regions of the Bering Sea

Ivonne Ortiz has been spearheading an effort to develop agreed-upon marine regions in the Bering Sea Project study area, intended to facilitate analysis and comparisons between researchers working on different parts of the ecosystem and between modelers and field researchers. Ivonne and coauthors-- with help from the many colleagues who contributed regional information-- are developing a manuscript for the second Bering Sea Project special issue that will provide full details of methods and full descriptions of the regions. But the regional boundaries are now considered final, so for immediate use by PIs within the Bering Sea Project, here we are sharing the following files:

JPG file showing the regions with their corresponding names and numbers
JPG file showing the regions without names/numbers
draft document containing general description of regions and methods and mapping BEST stations onto regions
zipped folder containing the shapefiles of both the polygons and points of the marine regions for ArcGIS users
document "BEST stations on marine regions", containing the list provided by BEST researchers of the 70 line and core stations mapped onto the marine regions.
BSIERP_regions_bndrypts.csv has the latitude/longitude points for each polygon corresponding to the different regions
BSIERP_regions_on rho.csv has the list of xi_eta rho points falling in each of the regions (this is specific to modelers who use ROMS output and want to calculate regional averages)

Feel free to email Ivonne with questions or for clarifications. Ivonne and colleagues have also mapped other locations/regions (e.g. acoustic survey, moorings, Springer-Piatt marine regions) onto the ROMS grid, and will be happy to map any suite of points required to facilitate comparisons and synthesis. The comparative approach (point-to-point, multiple-to-one point, area-to-area) may vary on a case by case basis for some individual projects.

Learn more about a new Bering Sea circulation 'synthesis' project

Back in August 2011, five new NSF-funded "synthesis" projects were announced-- these projects are intended to leverage the extraordinary breadth and depth of data collected under the Bering Sea Project by building new connections and extending the existing project efforts (find full details in this letter announcing the successful awards). One of those five-- the data assimilation synthesis project led by Gleb Panteleev, Alex Kurapov, and Jinlun Zhang-- aims to better describe large-scale Bering Sea circulation and to improve our understanding of tidal and eddy dynamics. You're invited to visit their new website to find more information and preliminary analyses!

Save the date: next Principal Investigator meeting to be held 28-30 March 2012

The Bering Sea Project's final 'formal' Principal Investigator Meeting will be held in Anchorage, Alaska, on 28-30 March 2012. The meeting will again be held at the Hotel Captain Cook. We hope you plan to attend! We expect this to be an especially stimulating and important meeting, as the full project is deep into synthesis and summary mode... plus March tends to be a great month to visit southcentral Alaska, with lots of sun and good snow. More information and requests for input on meeting planning are forthcoming... meanwhile please direct any questions to Tom Van Pelt.

Bering Sea Cold Pool in the News

Findings from the Bering Sea Project are the focus of a feature article released over the wires Sunday by Anchorage-based Associated Press reporter Dan Joling, and picked up today by media throughout Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, including the Seattle Times. Joling reports that "as scientists observed climate warming in the Bering Sea, they suspected valuable commercial fish species such as Pacific cod and walleye pollock would move north toward the Bering Strait and into the Arctic Ocean. "

Now they are suggesting that “a pool of cold water in the northern Bering Sea has been a locked door to the northward migration of pollock and cod, the fish harvested for America's fish sticks and fast food sandwiches.”

"Our original hypothesis was wrong, and we think they won't have habitat to occupy northward in the northern Bering Sea," said Mike Sigler of Juneau, a marine biologist with the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.”

Joling goes on to quote researchers Mike Sigler and Phyllis Stabeno, " two of more than 100 principal investigators taking part in a $52 million study of the eastern Bering Sea ecosystem. Supported by the National Science Foundation and the North Pacific Research Board, scientists are focusing on creatures from plankton to walrus." Read the full article.

Special Bering Sea session at the 2012 Ocean Sciences Meeting

The Bering Sea Project's Science Advisory Board and program managers are pleased to highlight a Bering Sea-focused special session for the 2012 Ocean Sciences Meeting, 19-24 February 2012 in Salt Lake City, Utah. This will be a great opportunity to showcase Bering Sea Project results in a major venue, and to build on the Bering Sea special session held previously at the 2010 OS meeting in Portland. Follow these links for more information on:

the Ocean Sciences Meeting in general
the special session details (#165 within the 'high latitude' category)

As of 8 October 2011, abstract submission for this session is closed-- stand by until around mid-November for an announcement of session scheduling and accepted abstracts. Meanwhile feel free to contact the session co-chairs, Mike Sigler and Mike Lomas, or Tom Van Pelt with any questions.

Second 'Bering Sea Project Special Issue' announced

To best communicate the tremendous amount of new information emerging from the Bering Sea Project, our vision has been to develop special journal issues on a roughly annual schedule. The first Bering Sea Project special issue is progressing well, with 24 manuscripts in the late stages of peer review-- we anticipate publication in Deep-Sea Research II in early 2012.

So it is with pleasure that the Bering Sea Project Science Advisory Board and guest-editing team announce the second Bering Sea Project special issue, with a 24 February 2012 deadline for review-ready manuscripts. The publications page has more information, or please contact the managing guest-editor with any questions.

PI meeting in Anchorage a well-attended success

Thanks to the 94 attendees of the 2011 Bering Sea Project PI meeting, held in late March in Anchorage. Thanks also to those who were unable to attend but contributed posters or helped with presentations.

Group photo: Glenn Aronwits. Click image for larger version.

We had constructive discussions and made good progress toward program objectives, agreeing on manuscript titles to add to our "Road Map" that organizes work through the conclusion of this program. More information on meeting follow-ups to come, but meanwhile thanks for making the meeting a success!

Want to know who's who? This document (PDF) names everyone in the photo above, and includes a list of folks who were at the meeting but not pictured.

Award winning educational video features fur seals

What do Marine Mammals Eat? is one of three Microworlds educational videos from NOAA's Ocean Media Center and Alaska Fisheries Science Center.

Each video features a NOAA scientist interacting with Seattle public school students and employing microscopes to better understand the world around us. The series connects real-world science with real-world topics and issues that students and teachers deal with in the classroom.

In addition to winning a Telly Award honoring high quality educational video, What Do Marine Mammals Eat? was an official selection at the 2011 Beneath the Waves Film Festival. See the video

About the Bering Sea Project

The Bering Sea Project, a $52 million partnership between the North Pacific Research Board and the National Science Foundation, seeks to understand the impacts of climate change and dynamic sea ice cover on the eastern Bering Sea ecosystem.

More than one hundred scientists are engaged in field research and ecosystem modeling to link climate, physical oceanography, plankton, fishes, seabirds, marine mammals, humans, traditional knowledge and economic outcomes to better understand the mechanisms that sustain this highly productive region.

The Bering Sea Project is a collaborative team effort, led by an elected group of six scientists working together with NPRB and NSF program managers. We invite you to explore this website to learn more about the Bering Sea Project's hypotheses, focal areas of study, integrated goals, participants, and ecological and social context.

Our recently-updated Bering Sea Project "at-a-glance" brochure introduces and explains the program. Download (PDF) or contact us for a hard copy.

Acronyms Revealed!
Hover your mouse pointer over acronyms to learn what they stand for.