The Project

So what will we be up to in Glacier Bay National Park?

The 2010 expedition is a preliminary expedition, a chance to gain valuable insights on the logistics of working in the park and working with the National Park Service, and an opportunity to get a little bit of data to tempt the taste buds.

Glacier Bay National Park (GBNP) protects unique deep-water fjords, internationally recognized as a refuge for many species of marine mammals (humpbacks, orcas and sea otters to name a few). What lives below in the depths of the fjords, however, is still largely a mystery. A few years ago one of our team, Bob Stone, discovered Red Tree Corals (above) living at shallow depths within the park - to put this in context these corals are usually found much deeper (think 1000m) out in the open ocean. There has been little work deeper than SCUBA depths in the park, and so what lies just out of reach of man is really an unknown.

How much of this coral, and other corals, are there in the park? What other species lie protected in the deepest parts of the fjords? This project aims to find, catalogue and study these corals in an attempt to uncover how and why they live in such shallow areas. Uncovering extensive coral ecosystems in GBNP would also be the first discovery of it’s kind in a US National Park, and so is an important part of cataloguing the diversity of organisms these parks protect and preserve.

The first step this year is to make specific observations for cold-water corals using cameras and taking environmental measurements, and to look at the feasibility of working within a National Park, which will be more than a little different than working in an open ocean environment. So this trip is a small peek and what is down below, be sure to join us on the expedition!

Aloha

Dr W.