A decade of rapid climatic changes in the Bering Sea has scrambled a spectacularly productive marine ecosystem in ways that scientists are only beginning to unravel.
These shifts have put a legendary winter snow crab fishery at a perilous crossroads, and also intensified conflicts within the fishing industry as trawlers that scoop up pollock and bottom fish face new pressures to avoid crab and other species in decline. On a winter journey into the Bering Sea, Seattle Times reporter Hal Bernton and Anchorage Daily News photographer Loren Holmes take a deeper look at the science and the people whose livelihoods put them on the front lines of these changes.
