Ships return to the southern ocean to enhance understanding of ...( Two National Science Foundation (NSF) ...)

Two National Science Foundation (NSF) research vessels have sailed from Chile toward the wintry waters off the Antarctic Peninsula, where they will examine the interlocking links of a food chain. Tiny shrimp-like animals called krill anchor that food chain, feeding on microscopic plants and animals and forming the basis of a living web that supports some of Earths largest marine mammals.

The R.V. Laurence M. Gould and the R.V. Nathaniel B. Palmer will serve as the home to about 100 scientists and support personnel for six weeks as they cruise the waters of Marguerite Bay on the Western side of the Peninsula in the second datagathering cruise of the Southern Ocean Global Ecosystem Dynamics (SO GLOBEC) program.

Eileen Hofmann of Old Dominion University, the projects chief scientist, noted that the project last year gathered the most comprehensive set of data currently available on a host of factors such as the distribution and abundance of krill in the Southern Ocean. Next year, the data gathered last season and this will be analyzed for trends and patterns that will allow scientists to grasp how environmental conditions affect life in one of the worlds most biologically productive bodies of water.

In a key feature of this years SO GLOBEC cruise, the ships will return to an area that was studied intensively last spring. This will give scientists an important comparison of conditions over time, said Hofmann.

Repeating the cruise in the same area this year will tell us quite a bit about year-to-year variability, she said. We already know from satellite data that the sea ice is more extensive this year, and thats good, because one of the projects science objectives is to test the extent to which over-wintering krill are dependent on the extent and position of the sea ice.

The Southern Oceans vast productivity depends on the small but enormously abundant Antarctic krill. Krill feed on microscopic plants and animals
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Contact: Peter West
pwest@nsf.gov
703-292-8070
National Science Foundation
7-May-2002