Alaska Fisheries Science Center: Dispatches from the Field

Scientists search for ice-associated seals -- ribbon, spotted, bearded and ringed seals -- in the Bering Sea, with hopes of radio tagging a few animals to learn more about their behaviors and seasonal movements.  Photo credit: Josh London (NOAA Fisheries).

Alaska Fisheries Science Center scientists get out there. They sail on large research vessels and small inflatable boats. They fly in airplanes. They do this to monitor seal populations that make their home on sea ice and learn more about endangered whales that summer in the subarctic and Arctic.

They use innovative technologies like radio and satellite tags, underwater cameras and robots to monitor fish and seal movements. They raise crabs in pens to see how fast they grow so they can better project the size of future populations of commercially important Tanner, king and snow crabs in the Bering Sea. Find out here what scientists are doing out there now!
 

2016

• Studying At-Risk Harbor Seals in Western Aleutians
   
• Understanding Northern Fur Seal Relationship with Prey Key to Conservation
   
• Surveying the Depths of Remote Aleutian Islands
   
• Investigating Steller Sea Lion Declines on Remote Aleutian Islands
   
• Cook Inlet Beluga Whale Survey
   
• Snow and Tanner Crab Growth Study in Dutch Harbor, AK
   
• Ice-associated Seal Ecology Research Survey in the Bering Sea
   

Summer 2015

• Southeastern Bering Sea Survey
   
• Yukon River Chinook Salmon Studies
   
• Searching for the North Pacific Right Whale
   
• Arctic Cruise in August