As climate change puts fisheries, ecosystems on the line, scientists work to understand how marine life will respond
September 11, 2017 — Glaciers in Southeast and around the world are melting. This much scientists know.
About half of the water in the Gulf of Alaska comes from glacial melt, current estimates hold. In Southeast, about 30 percent of all the water flowing from land to sea is glacier melt water.
That percentage is expected to increase due to climate change. But scientists don’t yet know how all that melt water might affect the animals swimming through it.
With the help of a net and a small crew, that’s a problem ecologists Anne Beaudreau and Carolyn Bergstrom have been trying to solve by continuing five years of research this summer. The professors — Bergstrom from the University of Alaska Southeast and Beaudreau from the University of Alaska Fairbanks — have been studying marine biodiversity at the mouths of the Mendenhall, Cowee and Eagle rivers.