Antarctica Braces for Influx of Invasive Species

 This post was originally published on the National Geographic Ocean Views blog.

Antarctica and the Southern Ocean may seem very far away from civilization, but they are at great risk of losing their unique qualities due to human activities. Warmer temperatures and human visitation are increasing the likelihood that invasive species can take up residence in the Antarctic, and potentially cause major changes. Two studies have found evidence of invasions both on land (from a midge) and at sea (from crabs). The remoteness of the Antarctic can no longer protect it from potentially destructive invaders. Forget about The Thing – the scariest alien invaders in the Antarctic come from our own planet.

Concern about a possible crab invasion of Antarctica began in 2007, when ecologist Sven Thatje saw a few king crabs on the outer continental slope of the Antarctic Peninsula. Their presence raised immediate alarms. Unlike more famous invaders like lionfish or brown tree snakes, crabs have yet to gain notoriety as ecosystem destroyers. But in the Antarctic, cold water has long kept out crustaceans like crabs and lobsters, which cannot survive at temperatures below 1°C (just under 34°F). The result is that many seafloor creatures in the Southern Ocean today have not evolved the same defenses against crushing claws as species in other regions. So the discovery of Neolithodes yaldwyni, a species of king crab, by a submersible surveying shallower areas closer to the Antarctic Peninsula (one of the fastest warming areas in the world) was unwelcome news. This indicates that the crabs are more firmly established, and have become truly invasive. The researchers who discovered the crabs estimate that there are 1.5 million crabs in the Palmer Deep. As warming of ocean water increases, the range of these crabs will expand further.

On land, researchers have also recently found evidence of unwelcome invaders that could make life very difficult for native species. This time, the invading species is the midge Eretmoptera murphyi, and they appear to be speeding up the rate at which decay occurs in Antarctic soil. The midge hails from the sub-Antarctic South Georgia Island, but the ecosystem on that island is very different from the one on the Antarctic Peninsula, where the midge has now established itself. Decay in peninsular soil is “not very active,” according to Peter Convey, one of the scientists who discovered the presence of the midge, so the insect will introduce a new process to the ecosystem. Unfortunately for the peninsula, though its ecosystem is composed of different species, the midge can still survive in its climate. Although one tiny insect might not seem to be very disruptive on a continent without many terrestrial species, it has been well established that many Antarctic species are highly vulnerable to disturbances, so introducing a new ecosystem process could introduce a major shift.

Unlike the crab invasion, however, the midge invasion and other invasions of land species can be slowed or prevented by following strict rules that reduce the possibility that species can tag along with humans visiting different areas of the Antarctic. Even so, it’s virtually impossible to eliminate the transfer of invasive species entirely. In the sea, it will be very difficult to slow down the global warming that allows new species to colonize the Southern Ocean, so we will have to wait and see if a crustacean-generated apocalypse occurs for Antarctica’s unique seafloor communities. The presence of these invaders, it seems, only further indicates that humans have impacted the environment in virtually every place on earth, with possibly disastrous results for the world’s biodiversity.

The growing problem of invasive species is yet another reason to designate marine protected areas (MPAs) in Antarctica as soon as possible. By restricting some types of human activities, MPAs provide reference areas that can be compared with areas where activities aren’t restricted, thus helping scientists understand what ecosystem changes are caused by invasive species or climate change versus those caused by fishing or pollution. MPAs can also minimize some human-induced stressors on threatened ecosystems. Unfortunately, MPAs can’t keep king crabs out, but they can help scientists obtain a better grasp on the seismic changes taking place in the frozen south.

US Celebrates 25 years of Antarctic Marine Research

The US' Southwest Fisheries Research Center is celebrating 25 years of researching krill, whales, and everything in between. It takes a lot of hard work to obtain data on Antarctic marine species - months at sea, long hours - but the time invested results in vital information that can help policymakers manage the Southern Ocean. As a side bonus, however, you might get to see an albatross skimming along the ocean surface, or whales spyhopping and breaching. And given the remoteness of the Antarctic, I imagine that scientists get the added thrill of feeling like explorers in uncharted territory. Congratulations to the Southwest Fisheries Research Center and all the government-sponsored research programs that have helped us understand the Southern Ocean better.

Bob Hawke Antarctic Science Fellowship

Have a burning desire to know all the ATCGs of the krill genome? Spend sleepless nights wondering about the impact of climate change on Antarctic mosses? Good news! The Australian government is launching a science fellowship that will fund your research! The fellowship is for three years and the Fellow's project must fall into one of the following categories:

• Sequencing the genome of Antarctic Krill.
• The extent and timing of sea-ice around Antarctica and its relationship with benthic communities.
• Developing the use of mosses as sentinels of climate change in Antarctica.
• Genomic mapping of moss populations on Windmill Islands off Australia's Casey station.
• Management and protection of terrestrial and near-shore biodiversity.

This seems like a great opportunity for a researcher with interests in these areas. Apply here. Aside from that, it was nice that in announcing the fellowship, Peter Garrett referenced Australia's leadership in helping beat back plans to regulate mining in Antarctica.

Stalking seals and penguins for science

I suppose I shouldn't really call tagging animals in order to analyze their movements stalking, but if you, John and Jane Q. Nonscientist, visit a new public website that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has established, you might just be stalking unsuspecting Antarctic animals. Scientists from NOAA have tagged fur seals, leopard seals, Weddell seals, chinstrap penguins and gentoo penguins so that they can analyze their movements during the Antarctic winter, when it's too difficult for human researchers to follow them in person. They've also made it possible for the public to see the locations of the tagged animals over at http://swfsc.noaa.gov/AntarcticPredators/. Stalking, but for science! I hope Mark Zuckerberg doesn't find out about this.

I can't wait to see what these Antarctic predators are up to during the harsh Antarctic winter.

Scientists locate shrimp under ice sheet

A recent NASA discovery has given hope to those of us hoping that a prehistoric lake monster will be found in Lake Vostok someday. When they put a camera 600 feet under the ice, where there's no sunshine and thus small chance of complex life, NASA scientists found a live shrimp and a possible jellyfish tentacle. The specimen is actually an amphipod, but looks like a shrimp and that's what news stories are calling it. It was three inches long. If you're wondering why this is so impressive, given that there are plenty of animals living in dark caves, consider that the site where the researchers drilled is 12 miles from the ocean, and the hole that was drilled was only 8 inches across. So the fact that anything was found is pretty impressive - and unlikely. Also unlikely is the possibility that the shrimp drifted in from somewhere else, since 12 miles is a bit far, especially considering that there probably isn't a whole lot of food under the ice (no plant life to serve as the base of a food chain). But who knows? Maybe scientists will find a food source that draws the amphipods and jellyfish.

In any case, further studies will no doubt be done to figure out more about these animals and any other organisms living under the ice. Though scientists were surprised by these findings, which seem to contradict a lot of assumptions about the conditions needed for life, they may be in for some even more shocking revelations.

Washington Post series on Antarctic science

The Washington Post has announced that it is sending a reporter to participate in a National Science Foundation (NSF) program that brings journalists to the Antarctic to report on the vast amount of research occurring on the continent. Ann Posegate will be blogging from January 5 - January 12, so check out her posts!

NASA tracks polar ice by plane

Sometimes it seems that most people only care about the melting ice at the North Pole because, of course, there's the prospect of oil. But NASA hasn't forgotten about the South Pole, and despite losing a critical satellite, has started the Ice Bridge mission to make sure it keeps abreast of how Antarctic ice changes. Interestingly, the article mentions that Antarctic ice is less studied than Greenland's ice - even though Antarctica is much bigger. Its bigger size and miles-deep land ice sheets could result in rising sea levels as global temperature heats up.

Mission Ice Bridge will use a DC-8 plane that is perhaps less fancy than the ICESat satellite it will replace, but some scientists argue it has just as much ability to take useful measurements. The DC-8 missions have already helped scientists get information on Pine Island, an Antarctic island whose glacier is melting into the ocean.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the article was a scientist's description of the differences between land and sea ice:

"Sea ice is like the ice cube that's already floating in a glass of water, he says. As it melts, it doesn't raise the water level.

But land ice is like the ice in your freezer Martin says. When you add a new cube to your glass, the water level rises.

And the glaciers of Antarctica represent a very large ice cube."

Life in Antarctica is full of drama

The Denver News had an interesting story last week about the tricky situations some bloggers in Antarctica have gotten into as the result of their posts. It apparently surprises some people to learn that people expected to work long hours in close quarters in one of the least inhabited places on earth get up to some PG-13 or R-rated hijinks. The publicizing of large shipments of condoms, or pastimes such as naked Jell-O wrestling have caused Raytheon, the company that provides a lot of the support services for Antarctic research stations, to try to crack down on the more salacious postings. The company even once disallowed a day off for the Midwinter Festival, which is an event many staffers anticipate for weeks and plan for extensively, causing much grumbling and unhappiness.

On the one hand, it seems heartless to deny people cooped up indoors for months the opportunity to vent to the outside world - sometimes communicating through the Internet can be just as satisfying as in-person communications, particularly if you feel as if you're interacting with new or different people. But it's also easy to understand that Raytheon may want to avoid the impression that it hires people who are merely marking time at their Antarctic jobs until the next big drunken orgy will occur. Nevertheless, as the article notes, there used to be a greater effort to keep station personnel occupied, but now bingo night is supposedly banned because small amounts of real money were involved.

Essentially this is a publicity issue. I don't imagine that in the pre-Internet days that Antarctic researchers and support personnel only participated in good, clean fun. But without much outside communication, nobody knew about what went on. Raytheon will have to strike a balance between permitting its employees to be human and ensuring that its contracts with the government are not in jeopardy. In the meantime, Antarctic bloggers might be wise to consider their time on the ice to be like a visit to Las Vegas, and keep some of the more salacious details to themselves. Not because there's anything wrong with Jell-O wrestling, but because those who haven't had to decide between braving -100 degree weather and staying inside for a 50th consecutive day won't really understand why sometimes it's really your only option.

Dawn in Antarctica

Just found out about a cool new blog. It's all about scientist Dawn Sumner's upcoming trip to Antarctica to study the cyanobacteria communities in Lake Joyce. Check it out! I'm looking forward to updates on her research.

2,800 Year-Old Bacteria in Antarctica

Once of the reasons ASOC wants the project to drill into Antarctica's Lake Vostok to use environmentally-friendly technology is that we suspect there might be some unusual life under that ice and we don't want it contaminated by outside materials before it can be studied. Results from samples taken Lake Vida, a salt lake buried beneath ice, illustrate the reasons for these concerns. Using extremely sanitary drills, researchers previously retrieved samples containing bacteria, which, since bacteria are apparently superior to animals as far as longevity is concerned, were able to be thawed back to life despite being 2,800 years old. But now they're going back, this time drilling through the ice, into the water, then into the sediment underneath the water. Once again, they're taking the utmost precautions to make sure they don't contaminate their samples or introduce anything untoward into this mysterious ecosystem. It's worth it if they make more amazing discoveries. Wonder what they'll find? Probably more interesting bacteria, but I'm also keeping my fingers crossed for a brine-dwelling, cold-resistant lake monster.

Pristine Antarctica?

Antarctica's a big, frozen continent with hardly anyone living on it. So it should mostly be free of the pollution that often accompanies human settlements, right? Wrong. Many of the research stations in Antarctica are relatively crowded together - because there's not a lot of ice-free areas on the continent - and they don't adhere to best practices in disposing of their waste. Which means that some rather unwelcome visitors, like e. coli, have contaminated the environment. A recent study published in the journal Polar Research presented some rather sobering data on the extent of the problem. The study's author reports seeing things like untreated sewage being dumped directly into the ocean, despite the fact that national governments agreed to the Environment, or Madrid, Protocol years ago in order to curb just these kinds of abuses.

Some governments are working on the problem, which admittedly is expensive because doing anything in Antarctic is expensive. The colder climate of Antarctica means that pollution lingers longer, for a variety of reasons. Yet Antarctica is valued by researchers for its more pristine environment, so it behooves research programs to spend the money now to protect their magnificent outdoor lab for the future. After all, if it can be made to work in Antarctica, it'll work on the rest of the continents too - maybe researchers can prove to the rest of the world that it's possible to live well and not pollute.

New Uses for Satellite Imagery in Antarctica

Monitoring emperor penguin colonies from space by looking for traces of their waste in satellite imagery may not be as glamorous as tracking ice shelf collapses and glacier movements, but penguin researchers are finding satellites quite helpful these days. Knowing where to look for colonies are will greatly assist researchers in making accurate population counts, and thus in tracking changes in the overall species population over time. Antarctica is vast, and travel is difficult, so locating colonies by space no doubt saves considerable time, money and effort. For example, satellite imagery showed that six previously known colonies had moved to new locations.

Antarctic Treaty Meeting

ASOC has been gearing up for several months for the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting, which will be held this year in Baltimore in the United States. It's the 50th anniversary of the Treaty, and as rumblings increase about the possible exploitation of oil and gas resources in the Arctic, it's the perfect time to celebrate the fairly revolutionary nature of the Treaty. As discussed by the journalist Peter Dykstra, the Treaty is a pretty impressive document. The Treaty reserved the continent for peace and science, and eventually incorporated a moratorium on minerals exploitation. The Treaty isn't perfect, however, with growing environmental threats from fishing, tourism, bioprospecting, and climate change. ASOC will be making the case for strong Antarctic environmental protection in its position as an observer to the Treaty system during the upcoming meeting.

In somewhat related news, the director of the Malaysian Antarctic Research Program (MARP) is urging his country to become a Consultative Party. It seems like Malaysia has a strong interest in studying climate change, and in environmental protection. The director noted, "With research, one can also find economic, sustainable economic benefits in Antarctica. However, we
must never let human greed take over such research as it might have greater negative impact on the planet." The article goes on to say that "When asked regarding the fact that global warming was a cycle that the planet had undergone many times prior to this, Dr Azizan commented,'Well, it's a matter of survivability and comfort. The planet will always be here, it's a question where we will be here or not, whether we can survive through it in comfort or not or whether we can survive or not.' " If Malaysia does indeed become a party to the Antarctic Treaty, it seems that it would be an interesting addition to the Treaty System, and could perhaps provide a strong voice for environmental protection.

Since we'll be at the meeting for the next two weeks, posting may be light but we hope to get some dispatches out, so watch this space for the inside scoop on what happens when fortysomething countries get together and try to agree on things!

Glacier Dust and Climate Change

There's a lot of great, fascinating research being done in Antarctica, and a recent study on dust in Antarctic ice sheets is no exception. Apparently, Patagonian glaciers operate as on/off switches - when the temperature is at its coldest, the glaciers are largest and give off dust that makes its way to Antarctica. According to Professor David Sugden, "Ice cores from the Antarctic ice sheet act as a
record of global environment. However, the dust levels showed some sudden changes which had us puzzled - until we realised that the Patagonian glaciers were acting as an on/off switch for releasing dust into the atmosphere."

Scientists hope that these results will help us better understand past climate change and predict modern-day climate change. We still have a lot to learn, and Antarctica is an ideal place to study past climate events because the thick ice sheets provide such an excellent record.

New Zero-Emissions Research Station in Antarctica

Video: Belgium's new Princess Elizabeth station.

Belgium opened its new zero-emissions research station, the first of its kind, in Antarctica this week. The station has been designed for energy efficiency and is powered by wind and solar energy. Toilet and shower water can be recycled multiple times.

The station took two years to build, and will be used primarily by scientists studying climate change. Since Belgium closed its last Antarctic research station in 1967, this station will be Belgium's only Antarctic station.

Many have responded positively to the new station because of the example it sets for other Antarctic research stations as well as the rest of the world. The project director of the station noted that if such an efficient station could be built in Antarctica, with its harsh climate, certainly the technologies used to build the station could be used elsewhere.

The station is indeed a great development, both for Antarctica and for the rest of the world. Hopefully other stations will take note of the design and technologies used by Belgium to construct this eco-friendly station and retrofit their own buildings to be more energy-efficient. Since most countries transport their waste out of Antarctica, wasting less will also reduce what they have to bring back.