Bering Sea Predators
Update
Meet the Team
Project Manager - Janet Warburton
Janet Warburton is a Project Manager for the PolarTREC program at the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States (ARCUS). Ms. Warburton has managed the education programs at ARCUS since 2000 and in that time has helped send dozens of teachers on research expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic. Ms. Warburton has lived and worked across the state of Alaska and now lives outside of Fairbanks with her young family and a menagerie of animals. Any spare time she has is devoted to sleeping, playing with her children, or playing in the great outdoors.
Researcher - Jacquelin Grebmeier
Jacqueline Grebmeier is a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee. Over the last 20 years, her arctic field research program has focused on such topics as understanding biological productivity in arctic waters and sediments and documenting longer-term trends in ecosystem health of arctic continental shelves, including studying the importance of bottom dwelling organisms to higher levels of the arctic food web, such as walrus, gray whale, and diving sea ducks. Dr. Grebmeier has coordinated and participated in numerous international research projects and has been heavily involved in the U.S. planning efforts for the International Polar Year. Dr. Grebmeier has been involved with numerous teacher experience and education programs in the Arctic, including hosting TREC teachers in 2004 and 2006.
Journals
May 29, 2007 - Ice Seal Research Aboard the Healy
Project Information
Where are They?
The team traveled on the USCGC Healy in the Bering Sea, which lies to the west of Alaska and the east of Russia. The Healy sampled the biologically diverse waters between St. Lawrence Island and St. Matthew Island with a secondary study area located between St. Lawrence Island and Little Diomede Island in the Bering Strait.
What are they Doing?
The research team studied the impacts of predators on the main benthic prey species in the Northern Bering Sea. Main predators of benthic organisms include spectacled eiders, groundfish, snow crabs, sea stars, and gastropods. As ice cover declines and groundwater temperatures increase in the Bering Sea, the ranges of mobile benthic predators such as crabs and groundfish may increase and thus affect food availability for other predators such as the spectacled eider. The team used trawls, corers and nets to extract sediment and water samples from the sea floor in order to inventory the benthic population and document any changes occurring within the marine food web. More information about this project can be found here.
Vocabulary
- Benthic
- Gastropods
- Groundfish
- Sea Stars
- Snow Crab
- Spectacled Eider
Benthic organisms live on or in the bottom sediments of a sea or lake.
A group of mollusks that travel on a single, muscular foot and often secrete a one-piece shell for protection. Snails, slugs, limpets and abalones are all gastropods.
Groundfish include species or groups of fish that live most of their life near the sea bottom, in the benthic zone. Halibut and Pacific Cod are examples of groundfish.
Sea stars (also known as starfish) are spiny, hard-skinned invertebrate animals that live on the rocky sea floor.
Snow crabs live in the colder waters of both the Pacific and the Atlantic. Click here to read more about snow crabs.
Spectacled Eiders are diving ducks that live in the arctic year round. Click here to read more about the spectacled eider.
