Antarctica

In 2016, NIWA technician Rod Budd is doing a routine dive under the Antarctic ice at Cape Evans, studying the creatures that live there.

Earlier this month, NIWA welcomed the Auckland University of Technology ‘Squid Squad’ – a team of scientists from the Lab for Cephalopod Ecology and Systematics – to unbox and categorise cephalopod species taken from voyages around the country.

This icy continent plays a big part in our global climate and, in turn, is directly affected by changes to the global climate – making Antarctica and the climate inextricably linked.

Scientists from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) have returned from a six-week voyage to Antarctica.

We are happily heading back from a highly successful trip to the frozen continent knowing that the data from this voyage will contribute to a broad body of science critically important to understanding the Ross Sea ecosystem and the impacts of climate change.

One of our main tasks for this voyage is to better understand the geographic distribution - biogeography - of Antarctic organisms in the western Ross Sea, from the frozen coast out onto the continental shelf at 500m deep.

We have now visited 23 separate sites in these coastal areas, albeit some of them very close together. Every time we visit a new site, we first need to map the seafloor as we are working in unchartered coastal waters.

We are now halfway through our Antarctic mission and the past two and a half weeks have been marked by feelings of excitement, anticipation, and trepidation.

We are two weeks into the voyage and while we have yet to enter the Ross Sea we have already seen so much! We are onboard RV Tangaroa with a team of 20 scientists and 18 crew, including a ship doctor and ice pilot, heading for the Ross Sea to study ocean physics, food web dynamics, subseafloor fluid systems and benthic ecology.

As New Zealanders search for the summer sun, 38 researchers and crew will board RV Tangaroa tomorrow for a six-week science voyage deep into the waters of Antarctica.

Jessica Rowley talks to three NIWA researchers trying to piece together what’s happening to the world’s largest ice shelf.

NIWA scientists are doing what no others have done before. In a mysterious world just below the Antarctic ice, a delicate web of ice crystals forms a habitat that’s unique and largely unknown. Until now…