Tag Archives: Zhemchug canyon

Our campaign to save the Arctic is just beginning

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The crew of the Greenpeace ship Esperanza in the Bering Sea

As the Esperanza’s tour ends (see our summary and video below), our campaign to save the Arctic is just beginning. Activists around the world have challenged Shell, from its corporate headquarters in the Hague and Houston to gas stations in London and beyond. Supporters all around the world are using social media to expose Shell’s multi-billion dollar Arctic hoax.

Listen to our podcast: Save the Arctic from Shell Oil

This is a global challenge, as the oil industry’s record in the Russian Arctic makes clear; tons of oil are spilled on land each year, and every 18 months more than four million barrels spews into the Arctic Ocean – nearly as much as BP spilled in the Gulf of Mexico. As other oil companies seek to exploit the melting sea ice and begin drilling in Arctic waters, we know we need a global movement to draw a line in the ice and protect this fragile region. More than a million people have come together calling for a global sanctuary in the high Arctic, and a ban on offshore drilling and unsustainable fishing in Arctic waters, and more are joining every day.

Be one of them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNLDDaTslH0&feature=youtu.be

Wall Dive, Bering Sea Style

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If you’re a SCUBA diver, you’ve probably got a favorite wall dive. It’s hard to beat the feeling of moving slowly up a steep reef, with dense marine life above and below. I’ll always remember my first deep wall dive, on a visit to Curacao as a teenager in the 80s.

My new favorite, though, involves a submarine rather than SCUBA. After a few dozen dives in Pribilof and Zhemchug Canyons, on the Bering Sea shelf break, I thought I had some idea of what to expect: gradual slope, soft sediment bottom, with coral and sponge density somewhere around 1 per square meter. So when we dropped onto a near vertical wall with nearly 100% invertebrate cover at 270 meters, I was giggling like a fourteen year old.

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Disappointed Birds

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The submarine is retrieved from the water above the Zhemchug Canyon. Photo: Jiri Rezac / Greenpeace

Guest blog by Pavel Petrov, a volunteer mate from Bulgaria onboard the Greenpeace ship Esperanza.

We are on a mission to document and explore the world’s largest underwater canyons here in the Bering Sea. While we were watching the submarine resurface from a dive we witnessed the very reason why we are here. We saw hundreds of birds waiting for the easy prey. However, we are not the industrial fishing trawler discarding a massive amount of dead fish that the birds thought we were.

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Diving for Mermaid’s Purses in Zhemchug Canyon

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Submarine being deployed from the deck of the Esperanza

Are you claustrophobic? I got that question a number of times when I told people I was being trained to pilot a tiny two-person submarine in preparation for Greenpeace’s research exploration into the biggest underwater canyons on earth, out in the middle of the Bering Sea. I guess no is the answer. I just dove 840 feet down into Zhemchug Canyon in a little red submarine and if the smile I couldn’t wipe off my face is any indication it was not a difficult experience at all.

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New Hope for the Grand Canyons of the Sea

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Today, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council initiated a new process that could lead to protections for the largest underwater canyons in the world. The decision came in response to requests from more than twenty organizations, including conservation groups, tribal organizations, and even seafood businesses.

The Council noted that new scientific information merits a review, referencing a recent study published by scientists from the University of California–Santa Barbara, Greenpeace, and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center. The study reported that the canyons are host to a high density of deep sea corals, which provide habitat for fish and other marine life. Deep sea corals can live for hundreds or even thousands of years, and are highly vulnerable to damage from fishing gear.

The Council’s measure, introduced by Council member John Henderschedt, initiates a new process to review the available science relating to the canyons, with consideration of new conservation measures as appropriate.

Council member Bill Tweit was quoted in the Washington Post today: “After getting that [scientific update], we would then assess our current fishery management, as well as habitat-protection measures, and think about whether they’re adequate or not.”

Many have been struck by the beauty of the images taken during our expedition to survey the deep sea habitats of these canyons. Now, you can explore the canyons yourself for the first time, by taking part in this submarine adventure.

The fate of these Grand Canyons of the Sea still hangs in the balance, but our hope is that we will now be able to work with the North Pacific Fishery Management Council and a wide range of stakeholders – including you! – to find a solution that ensures the long-term protection of the Bering Sea ecosystem as well as the fisheries it sustains.

Let’s not blow up Mars before we get there, we just might need it!

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By Jackie Dragon

Teaming with life: Shortraker rockfish, crinoids, brittle stars, basket stars, anenones and more seen on the sea floor in the Bering Sea.

There are some amazing places where discovery still awaits us – if we are careful to not blow them up before we even get there! The Bering Sea, up near the top of the world between Russia and Alaska, is one of those places. Here, new research, soon to be published in a peer-reviewed journal,  from a first of its kind expedition down into the largest submarine canyons in the world found fragile corals that play an important role in the life-teaming ecosystem of the Bering Sea.

At 60 miles wide and nearly 9000 feet deep Zhemchug canyon  is larger than Arizona’s Grand Canyon, as is Pribilof canyon, which cuts into the continental shelf just 25 miles south of St. George Island where Alaska Natives have lived on the bounty of the Bering Sea for millennia. Canyons like these are rare, occurring in only 4% of the world’s oceans, and they are important drivers in the highly productive zone coined “the green belt” by scientists.

Both of these “Grand Canyons of the Sea” revealed the existence of vibrant corals and sponges in their depths. The joint expedition into the canyons, which included explorers from Alaska, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist, and advisers from many of the world’s leading oceanographic institutions, confirmed the belief that the canyons contain coral and sponge habitat that plays an essential role for commercially important fish and other marine life.

Sign on to a letter of support for protecting America’s Grand Canyons of the Sea today!
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