For those of you who are wondering, this is our seventh year of working in the Bering Sea, and in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas near Barrow.  Our effort started to understand what makes this region a good place for bowhead whales to find food as they migrate from their summering grounds in the Canadian Arctic to the northern Bering Sea where they will overwinter.  We now believe that a specific sequence of wind conditions sets up a dense aggregation of euphausiids, or krill, on the shelf near Barrow that is a bowhead whale feeding hotspot. Large whales need patches or aggregations of their prey in order to feed efficiently, to get a good mouthful of krill with relatively little swimming effort, so this “hotspot” draws whales to pause and feed as they migrate.  The presence of the whales near Barrow also provides opportunity for the local Inupiat population to hunt the whales according to their subsistence tradition as they have for centuries.  Our work now concentrates on two lines of inquiry:  How variable is the ocean…from year to year and how important is this region as a prey hotspot for the whales?

Click HERE to read more... 

Collaborative Effort Pays Off for Local Habitat

It’s not always easy for Massachusetts’ Department of Ecological Restoration (DER) to measure the success of their wetland restoration programs, but a local student has taken the lead to do just that.

Tucker Oddleifson, a junior at Cohasset High School and long-time CSCR volunteer, has just completed important independent research to map and track the Phragmites australis that has invaded much of the marshland along Parker Avenue. Also called Common Reed, this invasive plant can spread up to 60’ per year, threatening the existence of fragile native plants and diminishing native wildlife.

Utilizing a handheld GPS device supplied by Cohasset’s Water Department, Oddleifson was able to record hundreds of distinct points on the earth to trace the extent of phragmite growing in the Parker Avenue Cut. He then transferred that data to GIS (geographic information system) software and was able to create a map of the phragmite that will serve as the baseline for further analysis.

In 2008, DER initiated the reconstruction of the Border Street culvert connecting the Gulf River to the Parker Avenue Cut. DER’s goal was to increase the tidal flow through the damaged culvert in an effort to reduce the spread of phragmites and improve the ecological integrity of the 1.7 acre salt marsh along the cut and the much larger upstream marsh, pond and mudflat system.

This fall, Oddleifson received approval from Cohasset High to conduct this independent research project at the Center for Student Coastal Research. Using sophisticated mapping software available at CSCR, Tucker was able to input, analyze and summarize his data. He presented his preliminary findings to a group of interested citizens at CSCR in November, and he plans to share his final report with the Town this winter.

CSCR will to continue to collect annual measurements of this phragmite patch for the next several years, and these maps will be compared over time to track and analyze the growth or recession of this invasive wetland species.

Oddleifson’s work could not have been done without the support and training provided by Cohasset’s Water Department and engineers Mark White and Natalie Ashton of Environmental Partners. “They provided an incredibly valuable training session for a number of interested students back in January of 2010,” noted Jack Buckley, CSCR’s President. “The students were able to apply this 21st century technology last summer and fall in ways that benefit both the students and the town.”