It is a wondrous voyage to the most amazing place on Earth and no day is like any other. That's certainly not to say going south is a bad thing, but it is not for everyone. The modern world collapses in on itself because of the isolation, reduced communications and the inability to get off the ship. It is long, remote, cold and mind-boggling. Nothing can prepare you for a long ship trip to Antarctica. ABC News: Iceberg calving aids scientific discovery.Lateline: Carbon emissions threaten marine ecosystems.Lateline: Antarctica the key to understanding warming.Remote, beautiful and challenging, the Southern Ocean is vital to understanding how the world is changing. The same acid attack is expected to affect coral reefs in Australian waters, like the Great Barrier Reef and Ningaloo Reef, as well as coral reefs that amazingly exist down in polar waters. Sea snails, or pteropods, are an important part of the marine food web, but they won't be able to form their shells if the ocean becomes too acidic. The scientists were also netting tiny sea snails to find out how they are being affected by more acidic seawater. This sort of work is invaluable to science. While the massive calving event was not due to climate change itself, it was used to get scientific readings similar to a massive melt event off Antarctica. The trip was timed to record the aftermath of the Mertz Glacier ice tongue breaking free from Antarctica in early 2010. The scientists onboard the Aurora Australia tested the water for various properties like temperature and salinity in about 150 locations on the way down to Antarctica and back. Scientists say the Earth has a complex and fragile climate system that needs much more monitoring and precise comparisons between observations in years gone by and those still to come. It is also expected to alter global ocean currents that regulate the Earth's climate system. That slows the rate of climate change, but warmer and more acidic seawater is threatening marine environments. The reason for going south was to find out how human beings are changing the planet.Įxcess levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are being absorbed in the ocean. It was not all fun, games and penguins on the Mertz Glacier voyage. While the humans on the Aurora Australis worked around the clock in the name of science, Antarctica's wildlife hunted, devoured and played in the Southern Ocean. We enjoyed the seals and whales from a distance, while the tiny, netted creatures went under microscopes. Sometimes the birds were so close you could almost touch them. The long-winged albatrosses would fly round and round the ship. They were loading up on food before the long-haul swim to Australia for the winter. They expended a lot of energy gorging on the plentiful crustaceans. In the dead of night we saw humpback whales feeding on krill. Thanks to the scientific netting and camera work we eyeballed squid, coral, marine snails, fish and plankton. Visible from the Aurora Australis were albatrosses, petrels, whales, seals, krill and thousands of penguins. So at this time of the year, Antarctic wildlife is moving around and feeding. In summer, the Southern Ocean is liberated from seasonal sea ice and rich with nutrients. The biggest animal on Earth, the blue whale, spends much of its time in Antarctic waters, while microscopic single-celled phytoplankton are also blooming down south among the icefloes. There's a lot to love about these quirky, sociable and mostly black-and-white sea birds, but they are not the only living thing in and around the icy continent. The icefloes were meeting points, resting places and launching pads for Antarctic mega-fauna like penguins, seals and birds and they bobbed around in the ocean swell as if they had a life of their own. Mostly that's straight through icefloes, although it is best to go around the bigger glacial icebergs. And some were run over by the ship - the Aurora Australia is an icebreaker and it is created to find the best route through the ice. They come in so many sizes, shapes and colours. The next iceberg arrived in the full, blue 3brightness of day in the Southern Ocean and it promptly suffered paparazzi treatment by most of those onboard the Aurora Australis.Įach lump or mountain of ice is an absolute individual. On the Mertz Glacier voyage the first big berg arrived dead in the night with hardly anyone watching. The icebergs and icefloes are a tourist wonder and shipping navigation hazard. When travelling on an Antarctica-bound ship, the ice arrives in dribs and drabs and then suddenly you are surrounded by a frozen wonderland. It hosts temperatures and conditions that are not conducive to supporting life as we know it. The prospect of ice, and lots of it, is one of the big enticements about travelling to Antarctica.
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