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Hanna Shoal Project Editorial Article HANNA SHOAL: An Integrative Study of a High EDITORIAL FOCUS EDITORIAL Arctic Marine Ecosystem By: Ken Dunton, The University of Texas at Austin Marine Science Institute, reporting on behalf of the Hanna Shoal Ecosystem Team 24 eco MAY 2015 Groups of walrus rest on ice floes in the northern Chukchi Sea. Photo credit: Ken Dunton . Background Although a little­known feature of the northern Chukchi Shelf, Hanna Shoal captured national attention in late January when President Barack Obama announced the with­ drawal of 9.8 million acres of Beaufort and Chukchi Sea seabed from future oil and gas lease sales. The announcement caught many by surprise since the withdrawals, including small areas of the Beaufort and a 25­mi buffer along the Chukchi Coast, were already deferred from oil and gas leasing in the Department of Interior’s draft 5­year plan, and this action added Hanna Shoal. The Hanna Shoal withdrawal is about 1.6 million acres, or some 300 lease blocks, located just north of Chukchi Sea Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Lease Sale 193 (Figure 1). Figure 1: The location of Hanna Shoal and stations occupied in the northeast Chukchi Sea during summers 2009, 2010, 2012, and 2013 for the COMIDA program in relation to oil and gas tracts from Lease Sale 193. Water depths are in meters. Graphic credit: Susan Schonberg and Tim Whiteaker. eco MAY 2015 25 Hanna Shoal itself is a shallow topographic feature of general, to the unique physics that steer highly produc- the northeastern Chukchi Sea that lies about 100 mi tive water masses into the region, the relatively shal- northwest of Barrow, Alaska at latitude 72° N. Water low average depth (42 m on the northeastern Chukchi depths on various parts of the Shoal are as shallow as 20 Shelf), and weak grazing pressure from low zooplank- m (60 ft), compared to 55 to 60 m (180 ft) on the sur- ton abundance during spring. These factors facilitate rounding seabed. In contrast to the soft muddy sedi- the deposition of a large proportion of pelagic primary ments characteristic of the Chukchi Shelf, the shallow production to the seabed, thus providing a major car- areas of Hanna Shoal are heavily ice gouged and bon subsidy to the benthic food web. The result is an scoured, resulting in a seabed that is generally charac- extraordinary high diversity and biomass of benthic terized by unsorted course materials, including sand, fauna that coincides with high water column chloro- gravel, small pebbles, and even an occasional boulder. phyll a in localized “hotspots” of the Chukchi Sea, These areas contain a relatively depauperate fauna, in first noted nearly three decades ago by Grebmeier et part due to the heavy scouring by ice that effectively al. (1988). The strong consumptive link between car- removes most long-lived biota. In contrast, the deeper bon produced in the water column and consumed on flanks of the Shoal are biologically rich, as reflected in the seabed (or pelagic-benthic coupling) has continued the historically high concentration of walruses there in to receive strong attention and is now well document- the summer that actively feed on the abundance of mol- ed, especially in shallow western arctic shelf ecosys- EDITORIAL FOCUS EDITORIAL luscs, crustaceans, polychaete worms, and other benthic tems (Dunton et al., 2005). fauna. Walrus forage and rest from ice floes trapped on the Shoal that endure long into late summer. But even Baseline Studies of the Northeastern Chukchi Sea following ice retreat by late-summer, walrus are known Region to make the 300-mi round-trip from haul-outs on the For decades, arctic oceanographers have been aware of northwestern Arctic coast to feed around Hanna Shoal the Hanna Shoal’s unique biological significance and its (Jay et al., 2012). importance as a feeding ground for marine mammals (Fay, 1982; Jay et al., 2012). In 2008, intensive field Oceanographers attribute the high productivity of studies of the northern Chukchi Sea, including areas Hanna Shoal, and the northeastern Chukchi Sea shelf in bordering Hanna Shoal, were launched following the Photo credit: Lee Cooper. 26 eco MAY 2015 Chukchi Sea OCS Oil and Gas Lease Sale 193, which The COMIDA CAB study provided baseline informa- produced a record $2.67 billion in revenue for the feder- tion on the biological, chemical, and physical char- al government. In response to the sale, industry-spon- acteristics of the northern Chukchi Sea, including a sored biological studies on tracts leased by Shell, description of its trophic structure and identification of ConocoPhillips, and Statoil began in 2008 under the key benthic processes during a period of sea-ice loss and Chukchi Sea Environmental Studies Program (CSESP; climate change. We found that the sediments of the see Hopcroft and Day, 2013). northern Chukchi Sea are essentially pristine with extremely low concentrations of aliphatic hydrocarbons About the same time, our group (the Hanna Shoal and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs); 17 trace Ecosystem Team) conducted spatially extensive bio- metals were present in sediments at natural background logical and chemical benthic surveys on some 107,000 levels (Trefry et al., 2014; Harvey et al., 2014). The km2 of seabed on a separate project, the Chukchi Sea only exception was confined to two previous (1989) Offshore Monitoring in Drilling Area-Chemical and exploratory drill sites, but there was no evidence that Benthos (COMIDA CAB) study (Dunton et al., 2014). bioaccumulation of these substances occurred above This study was followed by a more interdisciplinary natural concentrations. Nutrients were found at low con- and focused field program on Hanna Shoal in 2012 centrations during late summer, but our ship-board and 2013 (see: comidacab.org/hannashoal/). Both the experiments revealed that nutrients are recycled COMIDA CAB and Hanna Shoal studies are initia- extremely rapidly (~1 day), presumably taken up by tives funded by the Bureau of Ocean Energy phytoplankton that are responsible for the region’s high Management (BOEM), although Shell Exploration primary productivity. and Production also complemented these interdiscipli- nary studies with partial support for ship operations. Links to Earlier Research and Marine Megafauna Our recent work, along with the studies conducted by Our biological studies of the northern Chukchi under the our CSESP colleagues, has greatly enriched our COMIDA CAB study confirmed earlier observations knowledge of this very productive area in the northern that the high primary productivity of the region (as Chukchi Sea that we regard as the Pacific Gateway to noted by Grebmeier et al., 2006), combined with its rel- the Arctic Ocean. atively shallow depths and favorable circulation A sediment core collected with the benthic lander is brought aboard by graduate student Nathan McTigue. Photo credit: Ken Dunton eco MAY 2015 27 regimes, sustains a rich epibenthic and infaunal benthos For example, Schonberg et al. (2014) found that gray dominated by polychaete worms, molluscs, crustaceans, whales, which feed on benthic-dwelling amphipods, and echinoderms (Konar et al., 2014; Schonberg et al., were almost exclusively concentrated over an area 2014). Benthic food webs are complex, as defined by between Wainwright and Point Barrow, a region shown their trophic redundancy and diversity of both the infauna to have great concentrations of amphipods that were and epifauna. The high biodiversity and complex trophic first noted in the 1970s. In addition, although the area relationships are signs of robust benthic communities that south of Hanna Shoal is dominated by the favored prey likely possess some degree of resiliency to disturbance. of walrus, including infaunal bivalves and polychaetes, walrus distribution was observed to be closely associat- Analysis of benthic infaunal biomass through the ed with remnant sea-ice distributions. Walrus concen- COMIDA CAB study area revealed areas of potentially trated offshore on ice near Hanna Shoal as long as sea- very high biomass on the south and southeastern flanks ice was available but moved nearer to shore and to new of Hanna Shoal and provide good agreement with earli- coastal haul-out locations when the ice retreated off the er (1970s and 1980s) quantitative benthic studies. Taken shelf. As noted above, the observed concentration of together, these observations suggest that the high pro- marine mammals in these areas over decades suggests a ductivity of the region is a persistent feature of the temporal stability of available benthic prey items. northern Chukchi Shelf that is in part responsible for its However, recent decreases in ice extent and persistence EDITORIAL FOCUS EDITORIAL importance as a feeding area for marine mammals. during the summer months is likely resulting in a reduc- Figure 2: A synopsis of major water circulation patterns in the northern Chukchi Sea. Nutrient-rich Bering Sea water flows north through the Central Channel before turning east along the Chukchi Sea shelf break and circumventing Hanna Shoal and exiting through Barrow Canyon to the Beaufort Sea. The location of hydrographic and current moorings deployed around Hanna Shoal Ecosystem are denoted by yellow circles. Graphic credit: Robert Pickart. Adapted From Brugler et al., 2014 (with permission). 28 eco MAY 2015 A University of Alaska (UAF) oceanographic mooring is prepared for deployment off Hanna Shoal from the USCGC Healy in 2012. Photo credit: Ken Dunton. tion of available time for walrus to forage the rich ben- thos near Hanna Shoal (Jay et al., 2012). Water Circulation around Hanna Shoal and Implications for Zooplankton The circulation pattern around Hanna Shoal and its cor- responding water mass properties have been studied extensively over the past couple of years by a number of physical oceanographers. Thanks to their cooperative and coordinated efforts, a much clearer picture of the complex interplay of bathymetry, water mass contribu- tions, and formation of dense winter water is emerging as outlined recently by Weingartner et al.
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