click on the Bering Sea letters on the map THE BERING SEA A marginal sea located on the northern rim of the Pacific Ocean centered at approximately 58° N and 160° W. It is surrounded by Alaska to the east, Siberia to the west and northwest, and the Aleutian Island arc to the south. It has an area of about 2,300,000 km2 and a volume of about 3,700,000 km3. The bathymetry is about equally divided between a vast shelf to the northeast that is at most 200 m deep and the Aleutian Basin where depths range from 3800-3900 m over most of the region. The Shirshov Ridge (along 171° E between 500-1000 m depth) and the shallower Bowers Ridge (along 180 E then turning west along 55° N) effectively divide the Basin into three parts. It is connected to the Arctic Mediterranean Sea via the Bering Strait and to the Pacific via several sills between the various Aleutian Islands, although the main connection is thought to be between 168° E and 172° W where the sill depth is about 1590 m. The main circulation features include a large part of the westward flowing Alaskan Stream entering the Bering Sea through the passage centered at 170° W, turning east, and driving a cyclonic (counterclockwise) gyre in the Aleutian Basin. This largely barotropic current sees the two main ridges as obstacles which sets up a system of two eddies, one on each side of the Shirshov Ridge. Eddies have been observed separating from the eastern limb (often called the Bering Slope Current) of the Bering Sea gyre, the larger of the two systems. There is a countercurrent further up the Bering Slope whose dynamics are those of an eastern boundary current in a subpolar gyre. A series of currents and related fronts largely driven by Alaska Stream inflow through a shallower passage at 175° W flow north-northwestward on the broad shelf region. The main circulation feature of the northern Bering Sea is the Anadyr Current, a largely seasonally invariant current flowing northeastward and supplying most of the Bering Strait throughflow. This throughflow, driven by sea level differences across the strait, varies from about 0.1 m/s in the summer to 0.5 m/s in the winter, with flow through the Shpanberg Strait seasonally shifting from northward to southward to compensate for the differences. The shelf flows also make some mostly unknown contribution to this throughflow. The western limb of the smaller gyre to the west of the Shirshov Ridge contributes to and becomes part of the southwestward flowing Kamchatka Current. The local water masses are derived from Pacific Ocean water masses transported in to the area and modified by processes on the shelf. This results in a temperature minimum at or below 100 m, low surface salinities rapidly rising to about 300 m, and overall low oxygen concentrations. The water overlying the temperature minimum is surface water imported from the Alaska Stream, and the water below that is Pacific Deep Water.

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The second integrated eological U.S.-U.S.S.R. ecological expedietion was conducted during the summer of 1984 on board the Soviet research vessel Akademik Korolev. During this expedition, a broad spectrum of environmental investigations were undertaken. These investigations included:

     (1) Study of oceanograhic aspects of the Berring Sea;

     (2) hydrochemical regimes;

     (3) variability of the spatial structure of planktonic biocoenoses;

     (4) microbial distribution of organic pollutants;

     (5) impact of toxicants on the in situ state of planktonic communities;

     (6) assessment of elements of the ecosystem balance;

     (7) the balance between the new formation and degradation of of organic matter in
          the ecosystem;

     (8) determination of elements of the biogeochemical cycles of organic pollutants;
          and

     (9) scientific approaches to the determination of environmental capacity of the
          Bering Sea environment (Roscigno 1990).

Results of this second expedetion are discussed in the Results of the Second Joint U.S.-U.S.S.R. Bering Sea Expedition (ISSN 0895-1926) through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The 1984 Bering Sea Expedition

In early June of 1984, my professor (John H. Trefry) was contacted by Pasquale ("Pat") F. Roscigno in regards to his interest in participating on the Second Joint U.S.-U.S.S.R. Bering Sea expedition which was to be financed by the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service. Pat (who was appointed Chief Scientist for the cruise) wanted my professor to be part of the team because of his expertise with trace metals in the marine environment. What specifically interested Pat was someone to collect and analyze surficial sediments from the Bering Sea for a suite of trace metals.

Unfortunately for my professor (but fortunately for me), he had been scheduled to participate on a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration cruise to the Trans-Atlantic Geotraverse (or TAG) under the VENTS project. Although he could not participate, my professor suggested that I represent our group on this expedition. I quickly agreed.

According to Pat, the cruise was to take place on board a Soviet research vessel Akademik Korolev, which we would board in Dutch Harbor, Alaska. During the better part of June 1984, I gathered all equipement at Florida Institute of Technology that I would require to perform the task of collecting and subsampling sediments from the seafloor of the Bering Sea. Unfortunately, our gravity corer was being used by John Trefry's team on the VENTS cruise so we had to scramble for an alternative method of collecting these sediment samples. As luck would have it, two of the participants on the team were from Texas A&M (my professor's Alma Mater) and they were also collecting sediment samples for hydrocarbon analyses. They agreed to let me use their gravity corer for collecting my sediment samples.

So in late June I headed to the Melbourne International Airport and boarded an Eastern Airlines flight bound for Atlanta and then to Seattle. In Seatle I met up with other members of the American team. We spent the night at a Holiday Inn near the Sea-Tac Airport. Terry Whitledge, one of the senior scientist of the group, suggested we all go to Ivar's Restaurant in Seattle (on the shore of Lake Washington) for dinner. When we returned to the Holiday Inn, Steve Kohl, the project officer from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife, held a security briefing for the entire team in his room regarding our upcoming cruise. After the meeting, we all went to our rooms because we had an early flight out of Seattle to Anchorage.

Early the next morning, we headed to Sea-Tac and boarded an Alaskan Airline plane (whose company logo was "Fly the friendly face"...really!) and headed to Anchorage, Alaska. We arrived in Anchorage in the late morning. Our flight to Dutch Harbor was delayed several times due to technical difficulties. We finally left Anchorage around 2000 on a commuter plane to Dutch Harbor.

We arrived in Dutch Harbor (which is located on Unalaska Island in the Aleutian Archipelago) around 2230 (local time). By the time we got to our rooms it was past midnight, yet outside it was still light.

The following day, we were all transported by van to a warehouse on the docks to check our equipement, which had been shipped to the island in late June. All of my packages arrived without any damage and that was a great relief because had any of the equipement had been damaged, it would have been difficult to replace.

After everyone had checked their equipement and was satisfied with their condition, we were informed that the R/V Akademik Korolev would be arriving within the hour. We decided to wait for the ship on the docks. Thomas McDonald, one of the Texas A&M team members, decided to climb up a hill overlooking the harbor and observe the ship entering the harbor. I went along with him. Approximately 45 minutes after we had climbed up the hill, the ship entered the embayment and came into view.

It was easily the largest research vessel I had been on, spanning a length of 124 meters (406 feet). Most of the Soviet scientific personnel were on the deck waving to us as the ship pulled into port.

After the ship had docked, the American team returned to the hotel to gather their personal belongings and move them to the assigned cabins on board the ship. When we returned to ship and got settled in our cabins, we started loading our equipement on board and setting up labs and work areas.

Since I was on board to collect sediment samples and process them for trace metal analyses, I was given a small work space in sediment lab located on port side of the fantail. The first thing I did was to create a "trace metal" free work area by basically constructing a plastic tent over a work bench using plastic sheeting and good-old duct tape (1,001 uses and counting).

The tent that I constructed had a flap used to cover the opening to the work bench, thereby lowering possible sources of contamination. Several hours later, I had completed the setting up of my work area and had stowed all my equipement in the sediment lab.

As I was finishing up, James McKim (from Harbor Branch Foundation, Inc.) dropped in to ask if I had tools he could borrow. When he saw the plastic "bubble-like" contraption that I had contructed he asked me if I had any more sheeting because he and John Montegomery (also from Harbor Branch) needed as similar set-up to minimize contaminations of samples (I believe they were measuring cadmium in seawater using anodic stripping voltammetry). I had more than enough sheeting and duct tape to accomodate them with a custom-built plastic tent.

We all spent that night on board although a few of us went to town to eat dinner because we were aware that we would not taste (relatively) fresh vegetables for over a month.

The ship was scheduled to leave port the following day; however, problems with setting up transformers to run all the American instrumentation on 110-volts, caused further delay. Finally by late afternoon, all the electrical problems were solved and we were on our way.

For the next month and a half, we worked, slept and ate on the Akademik Korolev. A total of four polygons and 26 monitoring sites spread out across the Bering Sea were sampled. Most of the coring occurred at night right after water and biological samples were collected

When I was not collecting and processing mud, I was helping with the collection of water samples for nutrient, hydrocarbon and chlorophyll analyses. I even went and helped the Harbor Branch boys collect water samples for cadmium analyses from the fan tail.

Although we were on the Bering Sea in the middle of summer, the weather was anything but warm. When we approached land masses, the air would warm up, but other than that it was bone-chilling cold, especially at night.

As the boat steamed between stations, we had some time to relax. We could play basketball or billiards. The latter was played on a small table with holes cut out like on a real pool table. However, instead of balls, the Russians used small hockey-puck like disks.

The Russians sientists and officers even organized two parties during the cruise. There was plenty of champagne and vodka flowing for those parties. The Russian scientists and crew also organized many unauthorized parties during our idle times. During these parties, vodka flowed freely.

Overall, the experience I gained that summer was invaluable. The Russian scientists and crew of the Akademik Korolev were superb. I think we (the American team) all left the the vessel with new found respect for our Soviet counter-parts.

In 1985, I started the analyses of the Bering Sea sediment samples I had collected on the Akademik Korolev. Based on our agreement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, we were only required to analyze the surficial sediments (0-1 cm from the top of the sediment layer for iron, copper, manganese, zinc, lead, mercury and cadmium). I completed the analyses for these trace metals (Karen Pitchford from FIT performed the sediment mercury analyses) and submitted the results in a journal-like format for subsequent publication in a cruise report document.

The results from all participants in the cruise were compiled in a document titled Results of the Second Joint U.S.-U.S.S.R. Bering Cruise Expedition that was published by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1990. A PDF version of my chapter is available by clicking on the link below:


To read the paper or print out the article regarding sediment trace metal levels in the Bering Sea, click on link below. (You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader).

         Trace metal distribution in sediments from the Bering Sea (103 KB, pdf)

	The final celebration of our Bering Sea cruise. The third guy from the right is me (minus a beard). Pat Roscigno (Chief Scientist) is located in the forefront.