The RUSALCA mission set sail from Nome, Alaska, on the Russian research vessel (R V) Professor Khromov on August 22 for a 40-day voyage into the Bering Strait and northwards to the Pacific side of the Arctic Ocean. RUSALCA stands for Russian-American Long Term Census of the Arctic; the word rusalca also means mermaid in Russian. This mission is possible because NOAA and the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) signed a Memorandum of Understanding for World Ocean and Polar Regions Studies in 2003. From July 23 to September 6, 2004, the initial collaborative expedition studied the Bering and Chukchi seas. The area is considered particularly sensitive to global climate change, because it is a place where steep temperature, salinity, and nutrient gradients in the ocean meet equally steep temperature gradients in the atmosphere. |