As melting ice opens the Arctic to more ships, a UAA scientist studies how a spill would behave

More ships are moving through Arctic waters as the sea ice retreats, and with them comes a rising risk of an oil spill in a place scientists still don't fully understand. A University of Alaska Anchorage researcher just landed a $364,999 federal grant to help close that gap — studying what sunlight does to the toxic compounds crude oil and fuel leave behind as they weather in cold, salty water.

Those breakdown products are known to be toxic, but little is documented about how they degrade, especially in the frigid, brackish conditions of Alaska's coast. UAA professor Zachary Redman will measure how temperature and salinity change the process, and work to identify chemical fingerprints that could tell spill residue apart from natural material after a release.

That forensic detail is what spill responders in the Arctic need to make good calls, and it matters most to the coastal and Indigenous communities whose subsistence waters are affected both by a spill and by whatever is used to clean it up.