UAF, NSB study whale migrations

Petroleum News Alaska

The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service says it has two Alaska outer continental shelf research projects slated.

Researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the North Slope Borough, assisted by Native hunters from Point Lay, will tag 17 beluga whales over the next two summers to track seasonal movements between the Chukchi Sea and Beaufort Sea by satellite.

In another project, researchers from the University of Alaska and specialists from Cold Regions Research and Engineering will prepare an updated geologic information system, GIS, based Alaska sea-ice atlas for risk assessment for navigation and mineral developments. All ice-covered outer continental shelf and coastal waters of Alaska will be mapped. National Weather Service ice reports for the Beaufort, Chukchi and Bering seas and Cook Inlet will be included. Users will be able to view a statistical average over a broad area, a time series of conditions at a point or an individual historical ice report.