The U.S. Coast Guard crew gently guides a pair of ultra-fine meshed nets, to the deck of the Healy, where they land with a slight thud. It’s almost 1 a.m. as NOAA researchers and Coast Guard technicians work together to retrieve the contents of the “bongo” nets, named for their twin circular openings that resemble bongo drums, now resting on the deck of the 420-foot Coast Guard cutter in the Chukchi Sea. They’re collecting some of the tiniest denizens of these rich waters - zooplankton - as part of an annual mission to monitor the health of the ecosystem.
Science operations on the Healy happen around the clock while the massive vessel glides effortlessly through the Arctic waters as the team conducts biological sampling for the Distributed Biological Observatory (DBO)-Northern Chukchi Integrated Study (NCIS) Research Cruise. This annual cruise is an impressive scientific feat, bringing together multiple disciplines to study changes along important biological hotspots in the northern Bering and Chukchi seas.
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Researchers from the NOAA Ecosystems and Fisheries Oceanography Coordinated Investigations (EcoFOCI) program, a joint program of NOAA's Pacific Marine Environonmental Lab and the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, are aboard the Healy to measure and quantify the communities of tiny zooplankton. At first glance, these zooplankton look indiscernible from the algae and jellyfish surrounding them, but a closer look reveals they are actually small invertebrates, such as Arctic krill and copepods.
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Image via NOAA.