First beam trawls completed on the Denman Marine Voyage
The SAEF team before their first beam trawl.
The SAEF team after the first beam trawl.
Dr Nerida Wilson, Dr Sally Lau and Prof Jan Strugnell in icy conditions.
Sunset. Credit: Jan Strugnell
Sunset over the sea ice. Credit: Jesslyn Brown
The SAEF team has completed its first beam trawls off the coast of the Denman Glacier on the RSV Nuyina. These retrievals have yielded a precious array of benthic (seafloor) species that are essential to their research into life on the seafloor.
The team is participating in the Australian Antarctic Program’s Denman Marine Voyage, a highly collaborative research expedition to the Denman Glacier—one of the fastest retreating glaciers in East Antarctica—to understand how it is changing and the impact this change will have on sea level rise and ecosystems.
SAEF science lead Professor Jan Strugnell from James Cook University says harnessing some of the information encoded in the DNA of seafloor life will help her team understand the diversity, distribution, and connectivity of marine ecosystems across East Antarctica.
“DNA provides not only the blueprint for life but is also an important marker that enables us to understand the diversity within a species or population, connectivity between locations and historical changes, such as whether population sizes of animals have changed over time and when that has occurred.”
Enhancing this knowledge is key to ongoing efforts to protect Antarctica’s precious marine ecosystems, including establishing and monitoring marine protected areas.
The time capsule that DNA provides will also enable the team to build upon recent research in which they used octopus DNA to solve a long-running mystery about whether the West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapsed during the Last Glacial Maximum when temperatures were similar to today.
The team expects these species to help reveal the history of the ice in the Denman Glacier region and how it has changed in tune with the climate over millennia.
Most of SAEF’s team members are students and early career researchers who are having their first fieldwork experience aboard a research vessel.
Stay tuned to find out more about what species the team has discovered.
The Denman Marine Voyage is a collaboration between the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD), the Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science (ACEAS), the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership (AAPP) and Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future (SAEF). The SAEF team includes scientists from James Cook University, Geoscience Australia, the University of Adelaide, CSIRO, and the University of Colorado Boulder.