A team of international researchers set sail on the RRS Sir David Attenborough today (20 November) to answer some of the big questions about how Antarctic ecosystems and sea ice drive global ocean cycles of carbon and nutrients.
A team of international researchers set sail on the RRS Sir David Attenborough today (20 November) to answer some of the big questions about how Antarctic ecosystems and sea ice drive global ocean cycles of carbon and nutrients. Their results will help us understand how the Southern Ocean is being affected by environmental change, with consequences for the animals that live there, from copepods to whales and penguins. For the first time, the team will deploy Autonomous Underwater Vehicles below the vast areas of free-floating sea ice, which play a crucial role in the global carbon cycle.
The £9m BIOPOLE project is the first official science cruise of the UK’s new polar research ship, which departs the Falkland Islands today for the Weddell Sea with a team of 12 researchers. The physicists, ecologists and biogeochemists on board are preparing for ten days of round-the-clock science.
During the mission, which is taking place in early December, the team will investigate how the upper ocean changes in response to the annual melt of sea ice. Polar ecosystems are synchronised with the seasonal sea ice cycle – and play a crucial role in regulating cycles of carbon and nutrients, both in the Southern Ocean and across the world via ocean circulation.
Read more at: British Antarctic Survey
RRS Sir David Attenborough sees ice for the first time. (Photo Credit: Rich Turner, BAS)
