By admin 
For countless generations, people of the Bering Strait region have relied on the food they harvest from the sea without worrying about harmful algal blooms that threaten seafood eaters in warmer and more southern latitudes.
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Now, as the Northern Bering Sea undergoes cascading effects of a warming climate, algal risks pose a new challenge.
The change has been dramatic.
And it has prompted a change in the way Nome youth grow up learning about collecting food from the waters around their home. In early April, Nome high school students traveled to Bethel with their science teacher, where they presented their research at the Western Alaska Interdisciplinary Science Conference held by Alaska Sea Grant.
Algal toxins were present, at very low but detectable levels, in fish they eat.
Sophomore Audrey Bruner-Alvanna was among the group of student researchers. She said young people are concerned about algal blooms, which proliferate in warmer conditions, and their potential effects on wild food resources.
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“Because, you know, as the climate changes, as the world gets warmer and stuff, there’s going to be more of these toxins and stuff during summer,” she said. “I feel like a lot of people that I’ve talked to have been wondering about how our subsistence is going to change in the future based on all of that.”
The student research came about after one of the nation’s densest and biggest concentrations of toxin-producing Alexandrium algae ever documented burst forth in the waters of the Bering Strait region in 2022.
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