Researchers get $812,016 to study Glacier Bay's iceberg seal habitat

Harbor seals in Glacier Bay give birth on icebergs. The glacier that makes those icebergs has slowed by nearly half, and researchers just got $812,016 to work out what that means for the seals.

The chain is simple. A tidewater glacier calves ice into the fjord, and the floating ice becomes the platform seals need for pupping and molting. They require pieces at least 1.6 square meters. Up to 2,000 seals use Johns Hopkins Inlet.

Something got in the way. A submarine end moraine, the ridge of rock and sediment a glacier bulldozes ahead of itself, grew in front of Johns Hopkins Glacier and first broke the surface at low tide in July 2019. Between 2013 and 2021 the glacier slowed roughly 45 percent, calving less and putting less ice in the fjord. It also advanced about 230 meters and thickened about 30 meters between 2007 and 2021.

Whether that has hurt the seals is the question. Harbor seals in Glacier Bay declined between 1992 and 2008, before the slowdown, and aerial surveys of the inlet have run every year since 2007.

The National Science Foundation awarded the money Thursday across two grants, $512,016 to the University of Alaska Southeast and $300,000 to the University of Alaska Fairbanks, for one collaborative project running from September through August 2029. Nicole Abib leads the Southeast side and Kristin Timm the Fairbanks side. Jason Amundson, a co-investigator at Southeast, co-wrote the 2023 study documenting the glacier's slowdown, along with National Park Service scientist Jamie Womble.

Parts of the inlet are already closed to protect the seals. Cruise ships may not operate south of a line running west from Jaw Point from May through August. All vessels and seaplanes are barred from those waters in May and June, and in July and August must stay a quarter nautical mile from any seal hauled out on ice.

The researchers say the findings will feed science communication for park managers, educators and the roughly one million people who visit Glacier Bay each year.