Science expedition studying Chukchi’s Hanna Shoal

A science expedition sponsored by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, or BOEM, is studying the ecosystem of the Hanna Shoal, a relatively shallow area of the northern Chukchi Sea, northwest of Alaska. The expedition, with a team of more than 40 scientists from government agencies, universities, oceanographic research institutions and two public school districts, departed Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands on July 29 in the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy, according to a BOEM newsletter. This is the second field season of the research project, the newsletter says.

The newsletter says that the Hanna Shoal, often characterized as a biological oasis, hosts abundant marine life, in part because relatively warm water from the Bering Sea flows north through the Chukchi Sea during the summer. Researchers in the BOEM-sponsored expedition are gathering specimens and collecting data from the Hanna Shoal ecosystem over a two-week period, BOEM says.

BOEM sponsors scientific research in Alaska’s Chukchi and Beaufort seas as means of obtaining environmental information that will help inform the agency’s policy decisions relating to the development of outer continental shelf energy and mineral resources.

—Alan Bailey