Université Libre de Bruxelles
A review of the Biogeographic Atlas was recently published by John Davenport in Antarctic Science.
Here are a few quotes from the article you can find online.
“The Biogeographic Atlas of the Southern Ocean is a milestone product of 21st century Antarctic Science. ”
“It is an excellent showcase of the value of modern scientific power combined with co-operative and altruistic endeavour. ”
On the other hand, the SCAR Newsletter just published a focus on the Biogeographic Atlas.
We’re just back from the Sørfjord, Norway, where we collected a series of samples to monitor the contamination status, and to carry out acidification experiments.
Our teams have been working in the Sørfjord since 1995. The fjord is located in South-West Norway and has two ore smelters at its head. The location is an exceptionally contaminated area, where discharges (Cd, Zn, Cu, Hg, Pb) from metallurgical industry have occurred for more than 80 years. During the mission, we collected sediments, starfish and sea urchins at sites close to each smelter (sites Sl and S2), further downstream (site S3) and outside of the contaminated fjord (site S4). We are now processing the samples to determine the levels of metals in various grain-size fractions from the sediments and different body compartments of the echinoderms.
The sea urchin we sampled in the fjord
In parallel, we have carried out a series of tests with our ROV, to ground-truth its usage in the field for habitat mapping and characterisation of benthic communities. This allows us to be ready for field work in harsh conditions in Antarctica, in the framework of the vERSO project.
A seastar (Asterias rubens), in the typical spawning posiiton, captured on the ROV’s screen.
We also brought back some organisms to the lab to test the influence of different pH on the loss kinetics of contaminants in starfish and on the acid-base physiology and energetics of sea urchins. Work in progress now…
Gathering the samples by scuba diving
Our Diving team: Antonio, Philippe and Bruno
Untangling the 225m tether before a deep dive wit the ROV
Helped by a local, as our van was stuck by the fjord. We paid with Belgian beer.
The acidification experiment on the sea urchins is now running rather smoothly. An aquarium system has been set up and the Aquatronica material is doing a very good job for controlling the pH. The first results indicate that Sterechinus neumayeri is reacting very quickly to acidification: the acid-base balance of the inner fluid is already controlled after 4 days of progressive decrease of the sea water pH. This supports the hypothesis emitted in our previous work on Antarctic sea urchins and published in Global Change Biology (Collard et al. 2014, GCB doi: 10.1111/gcb.12735 )
The vERSO team has finally arrived at the Dumont D’Urville station (Terre Adélie, Antarctica), after crossing the Southern Ocean onboard the IPEV’s RV Astrolabe. Here are their first impressions (translated from French):
“I’m finally installed at the Dumont d’Urville (DDU) station in Terre Adélie, part of the “Terres Australes et antarctiques françaises” (TAAFs).
It took me 13 days to get their: 2,5 days in the planes, 4 days waiting in Hobart (Tasmania) awaiting the fixing of the ship’s generator, and 6 days at sea, on one of the most unconfortable ships I’ve ever been onboard, the Astrolabe. Even if the weather was good, the ship would roll, up to 35° on both sides! When you’re in such a roller coaster, the only things you can do is avoid getting sea sick and trying not to bang yourself everywhere… Little sleep, as we are constantly rolling from one side to the other in our berths. On the bright side, beautiful albatrosses are following us along the way.
Once arrived at DDU, the transfer to the station is carried out using helicopters, the sea ice extending up to 28km from the station. The helicopter carry the equipement (up to 1T per rotation). After two days, we were able to gather our personal equipment and part of our research and diving gear.
Firs sounding show that the sea ice thickness in the places where we are planning to dive is around 2 to 3m!
The station is located in a beautiful area, where I meet Adélie penguins, fulmars and snow petrels every day. From my room, I have a view on the continental glacier (l’Astrolabe) and on penguin colonies (noisy and smelly!). The logistics here are impressive, and we received a lot of lab space. We still need to find a solution to bring sea water to the container where we will be running acidification experiments in controlled conditions. Our only fear now is that time is flying by extremely quickly!
Wishing you the best for the end of the year,
Philippe”
Last week, Philippe Dubois headed South, on an expedition to the Dumont D’Urville station, managed by the french IPEV. Together with Loïc Michel, from the University of Liège, the team will be running ecophysiology experiments and collecting samples for trophic networks analysis, in the framework of the vERSO project. Once they have reached the station (see their current location here), Philippe and Loïc will be diving under 3m of ice to access the samples they will need to work.
We’re expecting news soon, and will be posting photos and other material as we receive it!
You can find more information about the vERSO project on the dedicated website.
A new paper by lead author Angelika Brandt was recently published in Advances in Polar Sciences. The paper addresses the main issues faced in the framework of deep-sea biodiversity monitoring:
Despite recent progress in deep-sea biodiversity assessments in the Southern Ocean (SO), there remain gaps in our knowledge that hamper efficient deep-sea monitoring in times of rapid climate change. These include geographical sampling bias, depth and size-dependent faunal gaps in biology, ecology, distribution, and phylogeography, and the evolution of SO species. The phenomena of species patchiness and rarity are still not well understood, possibly because of our limited understanding of physiological adaptations and thresholds. Even though some shallow water species have been investigated physiologically, community-scale studies on the effects of multiple stressors related to ongoing environmental change, including temperature rise, ocean acidification, and shifts in deposition of phytoplankton, are completely unknown for deep-sea organisms. Thus, the establishment of long-term and coordinated monitoring programs, such as those rapidly growing under the umbrella of the Southern Ocean Observing System (SOOS) or the Deep Ocean Observing Strategy (DOOS), may represent unique tools for measuring the status and trends of deep-sea and SO ecosystems.
Citation: Brandt, A., Griffiths, H., Gutt, J., Linse, K., Ballerini, T., Danis, B., & Pfannkuche, O. (2014). Challenges of deep-sea biodiversity assessments in the Southern Ocean. Advances in Polar Sciences, 25(3), 204–212. doi:10.13679/j.advps.2014.3.00204
Marie Collard is the lead author of a new publication on the resilience of Sea Urchins to near-future ocean acidification, which was just issued by Global Change Biology. The paper is a contribution to the vERSO project, which the Marine Biology Lab is coordinating. Find out more one the paper here.
Abstract: Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration alters the chemistry of the oceans towards more acidic conditions. Polar oceans are particularly affected due to their low temperature, low carbonate content and mixing patterns, for instance upwellings. Calcifying organisms are expected to be highly impacted by the decrease in the oceans’ pH and carbonate ions concentration. In particular, sea urchins, members of the phylum Echinodermata, are hypothesized to be at risk due to their high-magnesium calcite skeleton. However, tolerance to ocean acidification in metazoans is first linked to acid–base regulation capacities of the extracellular fluids. No information on this is available to date for Antarctic echinoderms and inference from temperate and tropical studies needs support. In this study, we investigated the acid–base status of 9 species of sea urchins (3 cidaroids, 2 regular euechinoids and 4 irregular echinoids). It appears that Antarctic regular euechinoids seem equipped with similar acid–base regulation systems as tropical and temperate regular euechinoids but could rely on more passive ion transfer systems, minimizing energy requirements. Cidaroids have an acid–base status similar to that of tropical cidaroids. Therefore Antarctic cidaroids will most probably not be affected by decreasing seawater pH, the pH drop linked to ocean acidification being negligible in comparison of the naturally low pH of the coelomic fluid. Irregular echinoids might not suffer from reduced seawater pH if acidosis of the coelomic fluid pH does not occur but more data on their acid–base regulation are needed. Combining these results with the resilience of Antarctic sea urchin larvae strongly suggests that these organisms might not be the expected victims of ocean acidification. However, data on the impact of other global stressors such as temperature and of the combination of the different stressors needs to be acquired to assess the sensitivity of these organisms to global change.
Philippe Pernet, from the Marine Biology Lab (ULB) is participating in the 2014 U.S. Antarctic Marine Living Resources (AMLR) Program onboard the RVIB Nathanial Palmer.
Find out more in the vERSO project’s expeditions section!
The SCAR Biogeographic Atlas of the Southern Ocean has been officially launched at the SCAR Open Science Conference in Auckland, New Zealand. The Marine Biology Lab of the ULB has been heavily involved in the effort, mainly in the edition, data mobilization and writing of the book.
You can download the first chapter of the Atlas as a preview.
Below is the press release, as prepared by the British Antarctic Survey.
The new Atlas, providing the most thorough audit of marine life in the Southern Ocean, is published this week by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR). Leading marine biologists and oceanographers from all over the world spent the last four years compiling everything they know about ocean species from microbes to whales.
It’s the first time that such an effort has been undertaken since 1969 when the American Society of Geography published its Antarctic Map Folio Series.
In an unprecedented international collaboration 147 scientists from 91 institutions across 22 countries (Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and the USA) combined their expertise and knowledge to produce the new Biogeographic Atlas of the Southern Ocean.
More than 9000 species are recorded, ranging from microbes to whales. Hundreds of thousands of records show the extent of scientific knowledge on the distribution of life in the Southern Ocean. In 66 chapters, the scientists examine the evolution, physical environment, genetics and possible impact of climate change on marine organisms in the region.
Chief editor, Claude De Broyer, of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, said:
“This is the first time that all the records of the unique Antarctic marine biodiversity, from the very beginnings of Antarctic exploration in the days of Captain Cook, have been compiled, analysed and mapped by the scientific community. It has resulted in a comprehensive atlas and an accessible database of useful information on the conservation of Antarctic marine life.”
The data, and expert opinions, in the Atlas will help inform conservation policy, including the debate over whether or not to establish marine protected areas in the open ocean. Sophisticated environmental models coupled with existing species distribution data provide a valuable outlook on the possible future distribution of key species as they adapt to climate change.
New advances in genetics have shed light on some of the best known species from the Antarctic sea floor. The giant isopod crustacean Glyptonotus antarcticus is one of those. The animal lives on the edge of the continent at depths of up to 600 metres. Previously considered to be a single species with a circumpolar distribution, molecular barcoding suggests it may, in reality, be a group with up to eleven species inhabiting much smaller geographic regions.
Author, and editor, Huw Griffiths, of the British Antarctic Survey, said:
“The book is unique and contains an amazing collection of information and photos. It’s been an enormous international effort and will serve as a legacy to the dedicated team of scientists who have contributed to it. The Atlas is a must-read for anyone interested in the animals living at the end of the Earth.”
The Atlas contains around 100 colour photos and 800 maps. It will be launched at the SCAR 2014 Open Science Conference in Auckland, New Zealand on Monday 25th August.
This week, we are hosting another workshop to scope out the next steps for the Microbial Antarctic Resources System (mARS) , a followup project from SCAR’s Expert Group on Antarctic Biodiversity Informatics (EG-ABi).
The participants include Alison Murray (Desert Research Institute), Anton Van de Putte (biodiversity.aq), Nabil Youdjou (biodiversity.aq) and Bruno Danis (Marine Biology Lab). PhD students from the CCAMBIO project also attended, as beta-testers.
The Microbial Antarctic Resources System (mARS) is envisioned as an information system dedicated to facilitate the discovery, access and analysis of geo-referenced, molecular microbial diversity (meta)data generated by Antarctic researchers, in an Open fashion. The scope of diversity will encompass all freel-living and host-associated virus, Bacteria, Archaea, and singled-celled Eukarya.
mARS focuses on past, present and future works. It offers a community-driven platform for scientists to publish, document, analyse and share their (meta)data with the broad community for science, conservation and management purposes, in the spirit of the Antarctic Treaty.
This week, we will be beta-testing the mARS to take it to Step 3, as described in our vision document.
