In 2007, the North Pacific Research Board (NPRB) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) entered into a historic partnership to support a comprehensive $52 million investigation of the eastern Bering Sea ecosystem. This "Bering Sea Project" integrates two research programs, the NSF Bering Ecosystem Study (BEST) and the NPRB Bering Sea Integrated Ecosystem Research Program (BSIERP). Their common goal is to understand how climate change is affecting the Bering Sea ecosystem and the consequences of these changes on lower trophic levels for fish, seabirds, marine mammals, and ultimately people. The BEST-BSIERP Bering Sea Project is a 6-year study of the Bering Sea ecosystem, from the benthos and the atmosphere to human communities, and everything in between. Nearly a hundred principal scientists are linked through a vertically integrated process and modeling program. Change the last two sentences of the first paragraph to read “Field research began in 2007 and concluded in 2010. Synthesis and reporting currently are underway. Headlines from the results were reported in a keynote presentation at the 2011 Alaska Marine Science Symposium.

For more information, visit the Bering Sea Project site at NPRB (http://bsierp.nprb.org/).