Antarctica

Mission to investigate giant iceberg underway

 RRS James Cook

The ship’s crew and NOC researchers on board RRS James Cook were joined by scientists from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) this week as their quarantine ended ahead of the expedition to the massive A-68a iceberg in the South Atlantic.

Mission to investigate giant iceberg launches

A submarine glider in Antarctic waters

A research mission to determine the impact of the giant A-68a iceberg on one of the world’s most important ecosystems gets underway next month.

A team of scientists, led by British Antarctic Survey (BAS), will set sail on one of the National Oceanography Centre’s research ships bound for the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia.

New Antarctic crustacean species described after 82 years

A spectacular new species of Antarctic deep-sea crustacean armed with spines, large claws and the raptorial mouthparts of a predator, has been described by National Oceanography Centre (NOC) taxonomists.

Antarctic sea ice controls ocean carbon storage during glacial periods

Half of the drop in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels during glacial periods is the result of Antarctic sea ice modifying ocean circulation and acting as a ‘lid’, trapping carbon stored in the ocean beneath.

Marine Life Talk at NOC in Southampton

Marine Life Talk

Thursday, 4 May 2017

Life under the ice: How we monitor and manage marine life in Antarctica

20th Anniversary Henry Charnock Lecture

Prof. Bess B Ward

9 October 2015 – Nitrogen cycling in the oxygen minimum zone

Bess B Ward

Oxygen minimum zones form in a few special regions of the ocean due to the confluence of high productivity waters (usually fed by upwelling) and slow midwater ventilation. In these regions, depth intervals several hundred metres thick are completely devoid of oxygen.

Antarctic fjords are diversity hotspots in a rapidly warming region

Andvord Bay, Antarctica – fjord hotspot of seafloor marine life (credit: Craig Smith, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa)

Rapid climate change is threatening marine communities, but scientists have found that marine life is flourishing in Antarctic fjords despite warming in the region.

Autosub in ambitious Antarctic mission

Autosub

A team of British scientists is making final preparations for an ambitious science mission that will use the National Oceanography Centre-provided Autosub underwater vehicle to monitor recent ice loss from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

Antarctica’s first whale skeleton found with nine new deep-sea species

Backbone of whale skeleton on seafloor (courtesy of NERC)

Marine biologists have, for the first time, found a whale skeleton on the ocean floor near Antarctica, giving new insights into life in the sea depths. The discovery was made almost a mile below the surface in an undersea crater and includes the find of at least nine new species of deep-sea organisms thriving on the bones.

‘Lost world’ discovered around Antarctic vents

Pillar supporting stalked barnacles and anemones

Communities of species previously unknown to science have been discovered on the seafloor near Antarctica, clustered in the hot, dark environment surrounding hydrothermal vents.

Working from the Royal Research Ship James Cook, scientists discovered new species of yeti crab, starfish, barnacles, sea anemones, and potentially an octopus.