Early Spring Plankton and Benthos
Update
Meet the Team
Teacher - Deanna Wheeler
Passionate about land and water, Deanna Wheeler is inspired to make sure that “no child is left inside”. Hands on, real science is her priority. From hatching, raising, and releasing yellow perch and horseshoe crabs to participating in a pilot sturgeon project, her students discover how connected they are to the world around them. Ms. Wheeler’s love of learning and the outdoors meld together in her professional and personal life. She is dedicated as a teacher and as a citizen to better understand and protect the environment for positive impacts on individuals, the community, and the health of our environment. Ms. Wheeler cherishes time spent with her family, exploring, camping, kayaking, reading, and just having fun, and she looks forward to trading places with the tundra swans that winter near her house in Maryland to spend time in the Arctic on a PolarTREC expedition.
Researcher - Lee Cooper
Lee Cooper of the University of Maryland is the chief scientist on the first of two science cruises that will take place aboard the USCGC Healy in the Bering Sea in 2009. Dr. Cooper organizes the science mission and coordinates the work of approximately 35 other scientists studying sea ice, walrus distributions, sea floor processes, biological communities, water chemistry, and marine mammal and bird observations. Dr. Cooper works at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in Solomons, Maryland. His research specialty is biogeochemistry and he presently studies biological changes in the northern Bering Sea. Dr. Cooper is working with a PolarTREC teacher to share Bering Sea research with the public and K-12 classrooms.
Journals
Putting the pieces together
March 31, 2009 What do I hear?
March 31, 2009 - Mapping - Part 3
March 30, 2009 - The Floating Hotel
March 30, 2009 - Experiments from Students
Project Information
Where are They?
The team will be travelling on the icebreaker USCGC Healy to a sampling area in the northern Bering Sea. The Bering Sea lies to the west of Alaska and to the east of Russia. The team will depart from Kodiak Island, Alaska, and return to the port of Dutch Harbor, Alaska, which is in the Aleutian Islands.
What are they Doing?
A diverse team of researchers will participate in the first of three research cruises this season in support of the Bering Sea Ecosystem Study (BEST) and the Bering Sea Integrated Ecosystem Research Program (BSIERP). Scientists onboard the ship will document late winter ocean conditions, study the biological communities found in sea ice, monitor the early spring plankton bloom, and investigate light penetration through open water and ice cover. Additionally, researchers will be examining the benthic communities living on the seafloor as well as observing an important benthic predator, the walrus. The region of the Bering Sea where the team is working is biologically rich and supports highly productive ecological communities of bivalves, gastropods, and polychaetes. These benthic communities have been changing over the past several decades, perhaps as a result of competing fish species moving north as the Bering Sea's waters warm.
Vocabulary
- Benthic Communities
- Biogeochemistry
- Bivalves
- Gastropods
- Icebreaker
- Plankton
- Polychaetes
Communities of organisms that live on or in the bottom sediments of a sea or lake.
The study of processes in the natural environmental using interdisciplinary tools from biology, chemistry and geology.
A group of mollusks, typically with two-part symmetrical shells.
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.
An icebreaker is a special purpose ship or boat designed to move and navigate through ice-covered waters.
Plankton are small or microscopic organisms that float or drift in fresh or salt water, especially at or near the surface, and serve as food for fish and other larger organisms.
A large and diverse group of segmented marine worms. All possess an array of bristles on their many leg-like parapodia.