26 August 2016

Hello from Sikuliaq 2016: The Dynamic Arctic

Posted by larryohanlon

This is the first in a series of dispatches from scientists and education officers aboard the National Science Foundation’s R/V Sikuliaq. Read more posts here. Track the Sikuliaq’s progress here.

 

Credit: NSF

Credit: Mark Teckenbrock

Welcome to our Dynamic Arctic blog! This will be our information hub to keep you up-to-date as we embark on a research cruise through the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. Our journey will begin in Nome, Alaska on about August 31 and finish around October 1, 2016.

There will be about 20 scientists, two science support staff, and the crew aboard the R/V Sikuliaq (see-KOO-lee-auk), a new American icebreaker owned by NSF and operated by the University of Alaska Fairbanks School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences.

Two research teams will be seeking to better understand the complicated ocean dynamics of the Arctic for the next couple of months: Both will focus on how Arctic sea ice changes are affecting the region’s chemistry and ecology. The team from Oregon State University will be largely looking at changes in primary productivity, while the team from the College of William & Mary will focus on the amount of nitrogen fixation happening throughout the Arctic. We’ll get more into the nitty gritty of the science in the next post.

Funding for this scientific research has been provided by the National Science Foundation.

My name is Kim Kenny and I’ll be managing this blog along with Jil Callaghan, who teaches 6th grade science at Houck Middle School in Salem, Oregon. Hopefully there will be other guest posts from scientists and shipmates (if we can tear them away from their work!) throughout the trip.

I hope you enjoy our blog. If you’d like to follow us on other forms of social media, you can find us here:
Twitter: @DynamicArctic
Facebook: Sikuliaq 2016: The Dynamic Arctic
Instagram: @DynamicArctic

Happy reading!