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U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Heads North for Arctic Deployment

19Jun

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U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Heads North for Arctic Deployment

The US. Coast Guard cutter Healy, the nation's largest, most technologically advanced polar icebreaker, is en route to Alaska to begin months long Arctic deployment and support scientists engaged in three distinct science missions. Coast Guard officials said that Healy left Seattle on June 13. The cutter is the Coast Guard’s only icebreaker equipped with scientific instrumentation by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support Arctic research and is considered ideally specialized for scientific missions providing access to the most remote areas of the Arctic Ocean. The first mission, in support of the Arctic Observing Network, is NSF-funded. During this mission, the Healy is to service subsurface moorings in the Beaufort Sea, north of Alaska, conducting a survey of the bound...

Higher Pacific Salmon Abundance in Canadian Arctic Linked to Warming Seas

A new study by researchers at Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the University of Alaska Fairbanks links higher Pacific salmon abundance in the Canadian Arctic to warming ocean temperatures. The study, published June 5 in the journal Global Change Biology, found that a two-part mechanism was tied to the presence of salmon in the Canadian Arctic. Warm late spring conditions in the Chukchi Sea, northwest of Alaska, drew salmon into the Arctic. When those conditions persisted in the summertime Beaufort Sea, northeast of Alaska, salmon could continue to Canada, researchers said. Canadian and Alaskan scientists, working together with communities in the western Canadian Arctic, connected the salmon booms experienced by subsistence fishermen in recent years with a sequence of warm,...

Alaska Delegation Secures Funding for 1st Commercial Icebreaker in Decades

U.S. Senators Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski (both R-Alaska) and Rep. Mary Peltola (D-Alaska) have secured federal funding for the purchase of a commercially available icebreaker ship, they announced March 21. The Fiscal Year 2024 Homeland Security Appropriations Act includes $125 million to purchase the icebreaker. The delegation has also secured commitments from the Coast Guard that the icebreaker will be homeported in Juneau, Alaska to afford the vessel greater access and reach into the Arctic. “The inclusion of funding for the first icebreaker in a generation is significant progress for our state and our country’s national security,” Sullivan said in a statement. “Our national security interests in the Arctic have never been more critical. We have a lot more work to do, but ...