A major ecosystem shift in the northern Bering sea

• Published in: Science
• Main Authors: Grebmeier, Jacqueline M., Overland, James E., Moore, Sue E., Farley, Ed V., Carmack, Eddy C., Cooper, Lee W., Frey, Karen E., Helle, John H., McLaughlin, Fiona A., McNutt, S. Lyn
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Clark Digital Commons 2006
• Subjects: biotic communities; ice sheets; sediments; hydrography; aquatic sciences; benthic plants; ocean temperature; mammals; oceanography; Geography; Social and Behavioral Sciences; Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Bering Sea; Pacific; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://commons.clarku.edu/faculty_geography/248; https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1121365

Until recently, northern Bering Sea ecosystems were characterized by extensive seasonal sea ice cover, high water column and sediment carbon production, and tight pelagic-benthic coupling of organic production. Here, we show that these ecosystems are shifting away from these characteristics. Changes in biological communities are contemporaneous with shifts in regional atmospheric and hydrographic forcing. In the past decade, geographic displacement of marine mammal population distributions has coincided with a reduction of benthic prey populations, an increase in pelagic fish, a reduction in sea ice, and an increase in air and ocean temperatures. These changes now observed on the shallow shelf of the northern Bering Sea should be expected to affect a much broader portion of the Pacific-influenced sector of the Arctic Ocean.