Photo: RV Sikuliaq in Resurrection Bay by Seth Danielson (Provided)
Sitka boaters saw an unusual vessel in Nakwasina Sound over the weekend.
The big blue-and-white boat is a research vessel, the RV Sikuliaq. It’s owned by the National Science Foundation and operated by the University of Alaska Fairbanks College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences. The Sikuliaq is part of the federal academic research fleet and is used by a wide variety of scientists from around the U.S.
While KCAW couldn’t get in touch with the crew on the boat by press time we were able to get some information from Jeff Richardson, a communications manager and science liaison for the vessel. In an email to KCAW, he confirmed that the boat was in Sitka over the weekend with a crew of scientists from the University of Southern California.
Richardson said that USC Researcher Drew Steen’s team is currently collecting sediment cores from the Gulf of Alaska to examine how microbes adapt in low-energy environments. Richardson says they brought their crew to Sitka to collect a sediment core from the ocean floor at a depth of 30 meters. It was their only stop in Southeast – the Sikuliaq is now en route to the Northern Gulf of Alaska.
