Our good ship Esperanza is currently out in the Bering Sea, one of the world's wildest oceans. Situated between Alaska and Kamchatka at the western edge of Russia, the Bering covers over 2 million square km of the northernmost region of the Pacific Ocean, and is home to some of the largest unexplored submarine canyons on the planet.
The Espy is returning to the region to continue research work begun in 2006 - exposing the impacts of overfishing, and documenting some of these previously unexplored canyon habitats. And this time, to make life a little easier and even more exciting Esperanza is equipped with two new mini-submarines capable of diving over 1,000 metres to bring back photos and video from the depths. So far large tracts of cold-water corals are being found at between 50 to 1,000 metres. These slow-growing colonies can have lifespans of hundreds or even thousands of years, and act as refuges for all kinds of fish species. They are crucial to the continued existence of this ocean ecosystem, but are also extremely vulnerable to being wiped out by one drag from a bottom trawler's net.
Join the Espy and crew on the Bering Witness 2007 tour as they make a compelling case for the creation of marine reserves to ensure the conservation of these important habitats, which are believed to contain species found nowhere else on earth. Read the crew's weblog here.
Bering Witness 2007: the tour so far
If you have GoogleEarth installed you can use it to follow the Espy's progress. If you haven't come across this amazing tool yet, click here to download it!
