Northern Seas Yield Biodiversity Gems, Southern Ocean Study Funded

FAIRBANKS, Alaska, August 2, 2005 (ENS) - An international team of scientists spent this year's brief polar summer in the planet’s northernmost reaches, returning to port at Barrow, Alaska on Wednesday with evidence of high numbers and varieties of Arctic jellies, squid, cod, and other animals thriving in the extreme cold - some that may be new to science.

Twenty-four explorers from the United States, Canada, Russia and China sailed into the Arctic Ocean on June 26 from Barrow, the most northerly point of the United States. Eleven of the scientists are engaged in the Census of Marine Life, an unique 10 year global collaboration to inventory biodiversity throughout the world's seas.

“The Canada Basin is one of the world’s most isolated ocean areas,” says Dr. Rolf Gradinger, head of the Arctic Census of Marine Life, based at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks and chief scientist on the voyage. “Several creatures brought aboard the Healy are unfamiliar to expedition experts and may well prove new to science.”

Under-ice SCUBA team (from left) Shawn Harper, Katrin Iken and Elizabeth Calvert, all University of Alaska Fairbanks, after a successful ice dive under the ice of the Canada Basin. (Photo by Bodil Bluhm courtesy NOAA)

The Hidden Ocean expedition, mounted by the U.S. National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, or NOAA, sailed aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy. This newest addition to the U.S. icebreaker fleet, commissioned in 2000, is designed to break four feet of ice and can operate in temperatures as low as -50 degrees F.

The icebreaking capabilities of the Healy allowed the scientists to sample 14 stations during the 30 day expedition, covering water depths from less than 200 meters to about 3800 meters.

They covered the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas and the Canada Basin, an enormous bowl walled by steep ridges and covered with ice. At each station, scientists conducted studies on ice, water and sea floor life forms using different sets of tools.

“Overall, the densities of animals are much higher than expected,” says Census researcher Dr. Bodil Bluhm of the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. “It now appears possible to confirm that the rich biodiversity surprising deep-sea explorers worldwide exists as well in deep Arctic waters, the most under-studied area of the ocean world.”

High Arctic sea star collected at the deep-sea floor in the Canada Basin by an ROV. (Photo by Bodil Bluhm and Katrin Iken courtesy NOAA)

“Modern technology has opened a window on this amazing world for the first time,” says scientist Dr. Russ Hopcroft of the University of Alaska.

“The imagery obtained of the mid-water and seafloor shows many life forms, such as soft bodied zooplankton, deep sea cucumbers and soft corals," Hopcroft said. "The few explorers in this area before us had no adequate tools to collect or see these creatures."

Baseline data about these previously inaccessible marine species will allow scientists to measure the impacts of climate change and human disturbance to the northern ocean such as energy exploitation, fishing and shipping.

“What continues to fascinate and motivate us all is the chance to record species never known before, to accurately map their range and understand their rapidly-changing habitat,” said Hopcroft.

News of the Arctic marine discoveries came with more good news for Census scientists - the announcement of initial funding for the Census of Antarctic Marine Life to conduct similar studies in the Southern Ocean.

A $525,000 grant, announced Friday by the New York-based Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, will serve as seed money for the Antarctic investigation. The Foundation is funding scientific coordination activities for the entire Census of Marine Life, which will produce a report in 2010 on the health of Earth's oceans. The Antarctic census is one of 14 field projects supported by the foundation.

During the Antarctic's main field phase, December 2007 to March 2008, the involvement of up to 200 scientists from about 30 countries aboard up to 15 research ships is expected, together with several million dollars in direct and in-kind support.

Countries confirmed to date: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The Australian Antarctic Division in Hobart will lead the project, which will complement existing Census initiatives studying life at the world’s deepest depths.

Australian Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Senator Ian Campbell, welcomed the grant, saying, "The generous grant from the Sloan Foundation enables scientific coordination and planning activities to occur, as well as facilitate coordinated sample storage and data management."

The Southern Ocean is vast and unexplored by science. (Photo courtesy CERFACS)

"The census will give a snapshot in time of the abundance of whales, seals, penguins and many other forms of wildlife," he said. "Since top predators are so dependent on the myriad of small creatures in the ocean the census will provide us with additional knowledge about ecosystem linkages."

Scientists believe that the Antarctic is the polar opposite of the Arctic in more ways than one.

Whereas the Canada Basin is a deep, lidded bowl, unstirred for thousands of years, the swirling Southern Ocean current may be an evolutionary cauldron, they theorize, drawing Antarctic nutrients upward and mixing life forms from the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans like a centrifuge.

Oceanographers have identified the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, flowing from west to east and moving 145 million cubic meters of water per second, more than the combined flow of all world rivers.

Because they now understand the physical churn that goes on in the Southern Ocean, biologists want to investigate its role as a cradle of genetic diversity.

The Antarctic Census will take extensive samples from the deep plain on the sea floor, 4,500 to 5,500 meters below surface, research that holds huge promise for biologists.

Dr. Ron O’Dor, chief scientist of the Census of Marine Life, said, “DNA research made possible through this project may allow us to reconstruct the history of marine evolution.”

The planet’s polar regions are uniquely vulnerable to the effects of global climate change and are reacting to the planet’s gradual warming in increasingly unexpected and dramatic ways.

This phenomenon is driving the International Polar Year of 2007/08, an international collaboration which includes the Censuses of Arctic and Antarctic Marine Life.

Because the Southern Ocean appears to be critical to the biology of the global ocean system, scientists need to understand how continued climate change may affect it and the other oceans.

Part of their research will center on the collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula in early 2002. Roughly 500 billion metric tons of ice sheet - 3,250 square kilometers, an area about the size of the U.S. state of Rhode Island - disintegrated in less than a month.

The Antarctic Census will also harmonize with efforts by BirdLife International to track and understand the migration of albatross, 19 of 21 species of which are threatened and the other two near-threatened.

A typical sea ice station during the Hidden Ocean Expedition with ice corer, generator for power, sleds for hauling the gear, and light and temperature sensors. Barrow, Alaska teacher-at-sea Jack Adams is handling the ice corer. (Photo by Bodil Bluhm courtesy NOAA)

The Census is associated with the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of the United Nations, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the UN Environment Programme and its World Conservation Monitoring Centre, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas, and the North Pacific Marine Science Organization.

It is also affiliated with international nongovernmental organizations including the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research and the International Association of Biological Oceanography of the International Council for Science.

The Census of Marine Life is led by an independently constituted international Scientific Steering Committee, whose members serve in their individual capacities, and a growing set of national and regional implementation committees.

The Census of Marine Life is online at: http://www.CoML.org

The Hidden Ocean Arctic expedition is found at: http://www.oceanexplorer.noaa.gov

NOAA's partners in this expedition include the University of Alaska Fairbanks; Western Washington University; Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute; the University of California-Monterey; Texas A&M University; the National Ice Center; the University of Hawaii; the Zoological Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia; the Polar Research Institute of China; and the Shirshov Institute in Moscow, Russia.

The Census of Antarctic Marine Life is found at: http://www.caml.aq