Bodil
Bluhm
University of Alaska Fairbanks

Bodil Bluhm is a Research Assistant Professor for Marine Biology atthe School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Born and raised in northern Germany near Hamburg, Bodil began conducting Arctic studies during her MSc work at the University of Kiel, Germany (1996-1997) and Antarctic work during her PhD work at the University of Bremen and Alfred-Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany (1997-2000).

Her initial research focus on the population dynamics of polar benthic invertebrates has broadened since she moved to Alaska in 2001. This is when she also began exploring Arctic sea ice communities in joint projects with Rolf Gradinger and Katrin Iken.

In the last five years, Bodil’s research has taken her to Alaskan, Canadian and Russian Arctic waters to study seafloor and sea ice communities, biodiversity patterns and food webs, carbon flow and population dynamics from the coastal waters to the Arctic deep sea.

Bodil's involvement in the Bering Sea Project is through joint work with her colleagues Gradinger and Iken and University of Alaska graduate students on the role of sea ice algae for herbivorous plankton and benthos in the Bering Sea. This topic is important to explore, because we need to first know what the role of sea ice biota is before we can evaluate what the effects of sea ice shrinkage or loss are.