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Bering Sea Benthic Studies

Hello Emily & Al & David,

I hope you have had a smooth start to your research. My class and I were wondering if you could give us some more specific examples of what you will be researching, and how it will differ from the last scientific cruise aboard the Healy.

Thanks for your time.... New Start Middle School Students

Mon, 03/31/2008 - 05:01

Emily S. Davenport

Hi New Start middleschoolers! We have just reached our first station, and so far so good, although there are always some kinks to work out in the beginning.
To answer your question(s)- our cruise is different from the last one in that there are a lot of people on this cruise that are interested in the phytoplankton that exist in the water column and in the ice. They want to know everything that has to do with the phytoplankton- this means they want to know how much phytoplankton there are, what is eating them, and how much nutrients are in the water for the phytoplankton to use. A lot of people are also interested in what happens to the phytoplankton after it dies, or gets eaten by something else. That's where our research group specifically comes in. After the phytoplankton die, some of them fall to the bottom of the Bering Sea, and hit the sediment (mud). The animals that live in the sediment then eat the phytoplankton, and the phytoplankton also decompose and provide nutrients to the mud. Our group is interested in everything having to do with the sediment- how much phytoplankton in the form of carbon is in the mud, what types and numbers of animals exist in the mud, how much nutrients are in the mud and dissolved gases, what happens in the mud over time, and all sorts of other things, in order to get an idea of how the amount of food (phytoplankton) hitting the bottom of the Bering Sea affects the animals that live in the sediment and the sediment itself.
There is some overlap in the cruises- some of the people from the previous cruise are on this cruise as well, measuring the same things they were measuring last time. There are also a lot of us (our research group included) that were on Healy last year measuring the same things. The goal is to go to the same regions of the Bering Sea around the same time over several years in order to get an idea about how the region is changing over time.
I hope that helps answer your question! Feel free to ask more if you have any!