There is an exciting new project happening on St. Paul Island; the opening of the new Bering Sea Research Center (BSRC).

I sat down with Veronica Padula (Chief Science Officer) and Stephanie Crawford (Marine Ecotoxicology Researcher at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks) to learn more about the new Research Center.

The BSRC is housed in the handsome new marine repair facility that sits by the St. Paul Island harbor.  You can watch fur-seal pups playing in the surf from the lab’s big windows!

You can’t answer scientific questions alone, and the vision behind BSRC is both to provide the capacity for community led science and also provide a firmer platform for partnerships with other scientific organizations studying broader Bering Sea questions.

The BSRC is run through the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island, and was outfitted with a lab and officially open for a new community-led research project during the summer of 2024.

This new research project has the fun acronym “Braided” which stands for “Building Research aligned with Indigenous Determination, Equity, and Decision-making”.  The project focuses on food safety and food security, with the aim of quantifying mercury levels in local food, and increasing both the awareness of what is in our food and our choices about what we eat. 

The lab will analyze mercury levels in any food sample provided by community members, including locally harvested birds, seals, fish, eggs, and seaweed. This analysis happens in the new lab and is provided for free. 

I asked Veronica and Stephanie what they are most excited about with Research Center.  Veronica has been enjoying seeing team members, like Dallas, get trained and taking leadership in the lab.   And, Stefanie loved seeing the enthusiasm from school teachers on a visit to the lab during Bering Sea Days.

We are all eager to see the results of this first community-led research project, and also see how the BSRC evolves in the future.

If you have any questions about the Braided project and the local analysis of mercury levels, please contact Veronica at: vmpadula@aleut.com

Thank you to both Veronica and Stefanie for sharing their expertise and excitement.