| Bering Sea on the web over the past month |

Bering Sea Research in the News

March 2008

March 29-May 6, 2008

USCG Healy Cruises into the Bering Sea on Second BEST-BSIERP Research Trip

March 13-26, 2008

USCG Healy Cruises into the Bering Sea on First BEST-BSIERP Research Trip

February 2008

February 20, 2008

Map is first to track global human influences on ocean ecosystems
Stanford News Service | A team of researchers has constructed the first global map of human influences on marine ecosystems by gathering and interpreting massive amounts of data from the professional literature and from researchers around the world. This study suggests that about 41 percent of oceans bear a serious human "footprint" and that few blue spots on our planet are likely pristine.

February 8, 2008

Pacific walrus threatened?
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner | Pacific walruses are not protected under existing regulatory mechanisms, according to a conservation group, so it turned Thursday to the Endangered Species Act.The Center for Biological Diversity on Thursday petitioned the US Fish and Wildlife Service to list walruses as threatened because their sea ice habitat could disappear in summers due to global warming and drastically shrink in winter.

2007

November 2007

November 16, 2007

Grander than the Grand: Descent into Zhemchug Canyon
Dutch Harbor Fisherman | People wait years for permits to raft the Grand Canyon. Michelle Ridgway just visited a much larger canyon in Alaska, one that most people will never hear about. Zhemchug Canyon, 20 percent longer and deeper than Grand Canyon, is a T-shaped cut in the sea floor beneath the gray waters of the Bering Sea. On a recent Greenpeace-sponsored expedition, Ridgway, a marine ecologist and consultant from Juneau, descended into the canyon alone in a tiny submarine.

October 2007

October 30, 2007

Grebmeier and Cooper contribute to 2007 Nobel Peace Prize
University of Tennessee Daily Beacon | Jaqueline Grebmeier and Lee Cooper are studying benthic community composition to aid in evaluating climate change impacts on the Bering Sea ecosystem. Their work is also conducted and published through IPY and contributed to the work of the IPCC, which recently won a Nobel Peace Prize for its work in assessing information about the risks and impacts of human-induced climate change.

October 23, 2007

URI oceanographers awarded $1.1 million NSF, NPRB grants
Researchers at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography have been awarded major grants to study changes in the Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean ecosystems in the face of melting ice due to global warming.

October 15, 2007

Bering Sea search finds no endangered right whales
Anchorage Daily News | Scientists searching for what is likely the world's most endangered whale came up empty-handed this summer during a one-month tour of an area in the Bering Sea where Pacific right whales like to feed.

September 2007

September 20, 2007

Prehistoric fur seal rookeries
Science Daily | The Bering Sea provides critical habitat for many species of marine mammals, including seals, sea lions and whales. The predictable formation and movement of sea ice is a defining feature of this habitat, although new evidence suggests that only a few thousand years ago, during a period of cold climate known as the “Neoglacial,” much more ice filled the Bering Sea and stayed around longer.

2006

October 2006

October 1, 2006

Bering Sea featured in the Seattle Times online
The nation's richest ocean ecosystem is in the midst of a major upheaval, and scientists suspect global warming is at least partly to blame. Scientists who spent a month on a University of Washington research vessel this spring are trying to figure out what the future holds for the region called America's "fish basket."

March 2006

March 9, 2006

Bering Sea and climate change
National Geographic | The north Bering Sea, one of the world's richest feeding grounds for whales, walruses, and sea birds, is warming to the point where animals are being forced to adapt or suffer the consequences.