| Summary: | Project Summary: The ecosystem and fisheries of the southeastern Bering Sea shelfare subject to both natural and human-induced change. Our knowledge and understanding of these changes is limited, because long term observations are few and fragmentary in time and space. Since 1995 Stabeno and collaborators have been monitoring site M2, over the Bering Sea middle shelf near 56°N, measuring temperature, salinity, chlorophyll, current speed, and meteorological conditions using instruments deployed on moorings. A time-series sediment trap, which collects particles sinking out of the surface waters, was deployed near that mooring from 1997-2003, with the last two years being supported by the Pollock Conservation Cooperative Research Center. A parallel time series ofzooplankton samples has also been collected. The carbon and nitrogen stable isotope composition and selected lipids, including fatty acids, fatty alcohols, and sterols, have been measured in the sediment trap and zooplankton samples. The composition of sinking organic material collected by the trap has reflected changes in oceanographic conditions and the Bering Sea ecosystem during the 1997-2003 period.
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