Yeti Crabs & Ghost Octopus! Unique Life Found at 1st Antarctic Deep-Sea Vents

Scientists doing their first exploring of deep-sea vents in the Antarctic have uncovered a  world unlike anything found around other hydrothermal vents, one populated by new species of anemones, predatory sea stars, and piles of hairy-chested yeti crabs.

It was "almost like a sight from another planet," said expedition leader Alex Rogers, a professor of zoology at Oxford University. 

Even in the eye-popping world of deep-sea vents, the Antarctic discoveries stand out, with the unfamiliar species of crabs found crowded in piles around the warm waters emanating from the seafloor. Many of the animals found at the vents have never been found at hydrothermal vents in other oceans, Rogers said. "To see these animals in such huge densities was just amazing," Rogers told LiveScience.

In the dayless world of deep-sea vents, energy comes not from the sun but from the hydrothermal energy generated in the oceanic crust.

Read more:  http://www.livescience.com/17715-yeti-crabs-antarctic-vents.html

Will Antarctic Worms Warm to Changing Climate?

ScienceDaily (Dec. 20, 2011) — Researchers at the University of Delaware are examining tiny worms that inhabit the frigid sea off Antarctica to learn not only how these organisms adapt to the severe cold, but how they will survive as ocean temperatures increase.

The National Science Foundation study, led by Adam Marsh, associate professor of marine biosciences in UD's College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment, also will compare the process of temperature adaptation in the polar worm, known scientifically as Capitella perarmata, with that of a close relative that inhabits temperate waters, Capitella teleta.

"By comparing these two marine species, we hope to assess how a polar environment shapes responses to environmental stress," says Marsh. "By better understanding how the environment can trigger genetic changes -- through the genes the polar worm turns on or 'expresses' -- we can gain insight into the potential impact of global warming on marine ecosystems."

Arriving in late August at McMurdo Station on Ross Island, Antarctica's largest outpost, Marsh and his research team undertook a series of dives in the freezing waters over the next two months to collect the polar sea worms, which are segmented like earthworms but belong to the class known as "polychaetes."

At a mere half-inch long and no thicker than the lead in a No. 2 pencil, Capitella perarmata would be a challenge to collect even on dry land. Because the worms feed on organic matter, the researchers have found the most abundant concentrations in the top layer of sediment from McMurdo Station's old sewage outfall. The divers collect buckets filled with sediment, from which the worms are sieved


Read more here ...

Antarctic Killer Whales May Seek Spa-Like Relief in the Tropics

ScienceDaily (Oct. 26, 2011) — NOAA researchers offer a novel explanation for why a type of Antarctic killer whale performs a rapid migration to warmer tropical waters. Scientists believe that warmer waters help the whales regenerate skin faster, after spending months coated with algae in colder waters.

"The whales are traveling so quickly, and in such a consistent track, that it is unlikely they are foraging for food or giving birth," said John Durban, lead author from NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, California. "We believe these movements are likely undertaken to help the whales regenerate skin tissue in a warmer environment with less heat loss."

As evidence, the researchers point to the yellowish coating on Antarctic killer whales caused by a thick accumulation of diatoms or algae on the outer skin of the animals. The coloring is noticeably absent when they return from warmer waters indicating the upper epidermis of the skin has been shed.
One tagged Antarctic killer whale monitored by satellite traveled over 5,000 miles to visit the warm waters off southern Brazil before returning immediately to Antarctica just 42 days later. This was the first long distance migration ever reported for killer whales.

The coloring is noticeably absent when they return from warmer waters indicating the upper layer of skin has been shed. The scientists tagged 12 Type B killer whales (seal-feeding specialists) near the Antarctic Peninsula and tracked 5 that revealed consistent movement to sub-tropical waters. The whales tended to slow in the warmest waters although there was no obvious interruption in swim speed or direction to indicate calving or prolonged feeding.

"They went to the edge of the tropics at high speed, turned around and came straight back to Antarctica, at the onset of winter," said Robert Pitman, co-author of the study. "The standard feeding or breeding migration does not seem to apply here."

Researchers believe there are at least three different types of killer whales in Antarctica and have labeled them Types A, B and C.


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111026113824.htm

Antarctic fur seals breed where they were born

Scientists have discovered that female Antarctic fur seals have an uncanny ability to return to within a body length of where they were born when it's time to breed.

Even if they don't manage to get this close, the majority of females give birth to pups within 12 metres of where they themselves were born.
'It's as if they have some sort of in-built GPS system,' says Dr Joe Hoffman from the University of Bielefeld in Germany, who led the study. 'Or it could be simply that they're using cues, like smell, that we can't measure. What is remarkable is that the colony is featureless, so it's impressive they find their way back.'
What's also striking is that these seals may have spent up to five years feeding hundreds of kilometres out at sea before coming home.
Knowing more about how these seals live their lives will help scientists understand how populations affect the fragile local ecosystem of South Georgia in the south Atlantic Ocean.

Read on ...

A New Species of 'Gigantic' Mollusc Has Been Discovered in the Antarctic Waters

ScienceDaily (Oct. 8, 2011) — Spanish researchers have discovered a rare mollusc in Antarctic waters that looks the same as limpets but is bigger in size than the species known to date. The specimen appeared in waters much further away from where this type of species is normally found.

A new species of mollusc that shares the same morphology as the limpet (Fissurellidae) and is 14 millimetres in length has been found in Antarctic waters. This discovery by a research team from the Ecology and Zoology Department of the University of Vigo, Spain has been published in The Nautilus and provides more information on the members of the Zeidora genus and their geographic distribution.
Cristian Aldea, co-author of the study, explains that "this genus belongs to a group which we know very little about. This group is made up of 14 species of which very few specimens have found."
Named Zeidora Antarctica, this 14 millimetre long specimen is much bigger than members of the same genus, who are not normally longer than 5 millimetres.

It was discovered at a depth of more than 600 metres in the Bellingshausen Sea in Antarctica -- a habitat with very different characteristics to that of other Zeidora species. Previously found specimens of this group live in tropical and warm waters. Out of all of them, eight species have been discovered in the Northern Hemisphere in the Caribbean, Japan, Panama and the Red Sea. Furthermore, six have been found in the Southern Hemisphere in places like the Galapagos Islands, Easter Island, Australia and New Zealand.

The specimen was found during the BENTART expedition of the Spanish National Antarctic Programme on board the Hespérides. Aldea recognises that he was not expecting "to find such a species on the trip since those that have already been discovered are known to be distributed from low (tropical) to medium latitudes with the closest becoming a species found in New Zealand."

Aldea states that "we carried out the description of the species based on the shell, given that no soft tissue could be found in the only caught specimen." These studies have allowed us to show, for instance, the number and size of ribs that the mollusc has. However, the morphology of its soft tissue was not revealed but "all of the characteristics taken from the shell indicate that it is a living species as opposed to a fossil species," according to the expert.

The discovered specimen is on display at the Madrid's National Natural History Museum (MNCN) and has been compared with other Zeidora naufraga Watson, Zeidora maoria Powell and Zeidora reticulata species that are on display at the London's Natural History Museum.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111006084232.htm

NZ Minister condemns Japan's whaling plans

Mark Willacy, agencies

New Zealand has condemned Japan's plans to resume whaling in Antarctica, describing it as an "entirely disrespectful" move based on "dubious" science.

The Japanese Agriculture Minister, Michihiko Kano, has said the annual hunt will start around November.

New Zealand's Foreign Minister, Murray McCully said this meant Tokyo was isolating itself from the international community.

"Japan's decision is increasingly out of step with international opinion," Mr McCully said. "It is also entirely disrespectful of the strong concerns expressed by Australian and New Zealand people for whom the Southern Ocean is our neighbourhood."

McCully also said he is concerned at Japan's plans to boost security for its whaling fleet, as well as comments from environmental activist group Sea Shepherd, suggesting its vessels could use life-threatening tactics to stop whalers.

"The New Zealand government has consistently urged all parties to act responsibly during the whaling season, and to avoid actions that may put their lives, or the lives of others, at risk."

Activists
The anti-whaling group, Sea Shepherd, says it will do everything possible to intervene in Japan's upcoming whaling season.

Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson says Australia and New Zealand are offering only empty rhetoric against the Southern Ocean hunt.

He told Radio Australia his organisation will not buckle to Japan's increasingly aggressive tactics.

"We're not going to hurt anybody, but we're certainly going to take the risks that are necessary to block them," he said. "That's the key to the whole thing. Blocking their operations. And if they can't load whales, they can't kill them".

He said Japan is spending $US40 million to send their whaling fleet, and another $US20 million on security.
Legal move
The Australian Opposition is urging the Government to seek an injunction at the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea against Japanese whaling.

The Environment Minister, Tony Burke, has condemned Japan's decision to continue its annual whale hunt in the southern ocean this summer.

Last year, Australia launched legal action against Japan in the International Court of Justice.

But the Oppostion's environment spokesman, Greg Hunt, says the ICJ will take too long to make a decision.

"We expect that on behalf of the Australian people who don't want to see whaling in Australian waters in Australian territory for whales that are travelling in the southern ocean, this is the moment to begin an injunctive action," he said.

http://abcasiapacificnews.com/stories/201110/3332117.htm

King crabs on Antarctic march

Giant skeleton-crushing king crabs are invading the waters off the Antarctic Peninsula, which are warming with climate change, say researchers.

Dr Craig Smith, a professor of oceanography at the University of Hawaii, and colleagues, report their findings on king crabs (Neolithodes yaldwyni) today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

"For the last 14 million years or so, these kinds of crabs have been excluded from the Antarctic shelf waters because it's too cold for them," says Smith.
"But on the Antarctic Peninsula the water is warming very rapidly."

Smith and colleagues stumbled across the large population of king crabs while studying the sea floor off the West Antarctic Peninsula for the effects of climate change.

"As soon as we saw them we realised how significant they might be so we did a careful survey," says Smith.

The researchers used a remotely-operated robotic vehicle, connected to a fibre optic cable, to observe the crabs in an underwater basin off the Antarctic Peninsula called the Palmer Deep.

The researchers found 42 crabs, including a female carrying eggs, lurking on the sea floor between 1400 metres and 850 metres deep at temperatures above 1.4°C.
They estimate there is a population of more than 1 million crabs in the Palmer Deep.

Warming waters

In Antarctica, the surface waters are cooler than water lower down, and this has so far excluded the king crabs from rising above a certain depth.

The researchers measured the temperature of the water at different depths and looked at past records to work out the rate at which the water there is warming.

Based on this they calculated that the crabs probably colonised the Palmer Deep 30 to 40 years ago and will invade the rest of the shelf in the next two decades.

"It looks like within the next 20 years or so the water up on the shelf at 500 metres will be warm enough for them," says Smith.

Voracious predators

King crabs have 12-centimetre wide bodies and extend 40 centimetres from tip to tip of their legs. "They can crush clams and other kinds of animals with hard shells so they are very voracious predators," says Smith. "They also forage very actively in the sediments. They dig through sediments and capture animals for feeding." For several millions of years, the native fauna of Antarctica have evolved in the absence of such predators, and are therefore very vulnerable to the crabs, says Smith. He and colleagues surveyed for echinoderms, such as sea urchins, sea lilies and starfish, which are known prey of king crabs. "We saw none of those in the 'crab zone', but when we went 100 metres above we saw lots of them," says Smith. They also found the overall number of different species in the crab zone was much lower than above it. "It looks like the crabs are causing local extinctions of a variety of species that have evolved in the Antarctic," says Smith. Ecosystem engineers The researchers also observed the crabs feeding and digging for animals in the sediment, and making traces in the sediment as they moved around. Smith says the crabs are not only reducing biodiversity but also changing the geochemistry of the sediment through eating the animals in it. "As these crabs invade the Antarctic they are changing the natural ecosystem there," he says. "We call them ecosystem engineers" Smith says the next step is to find out more about where the crabs are coming from. They are many thousands of kilometres away from the Ross Sea, south of New Zealand, where single individual king crabs have previously been found. Because the Antarctic Pensinsua is warming faster than anywhere else in Antarctica, this is where king crab invasions are expected to occur fast, says Smith. http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2011/09/07/3311346.htm

Russia Poised To Breach Mysterious Antarctic Lake

Date: 07-Feb-11
Country: RUSSIA
Author: Alissa de Carbonnel

For 15 million years, an icebound lake has remained sealed deep beneath Antarctica's frozen crust, possibly hiding prehistoric or unknown life. Now Russian scientists are on the brink of piercing through to its secrets.

"There's only a bit left to go," Alexei Turkeyev, chief of the Russian polar Vostok Station, told Reuters by satellite phone. His team has drilled for weeks in a race to reach the lake, 3,750 meters (12,000 ft) beneath the polar ice cap, before the end of the brief Antarctic summer.

It was here that the coldest temperature ever found on Earth -- minus 89.2 Celsius (minus 128.6 Fahrenheit) -- was recorded.

With the rapid onset of winter, scientists will be forced to leave on the last flight out for this season, on Feb 6.

"It's minus 40 (Celsius) outside," Turkeyev said. "But whatever, we're working. We're feeling good. There's only 5 meters left until we get to the lake so it'll all be very soon."

Scientists suspect the lake's depths will reveal new life forms, show how the planet was before the ice age and how life evolved. It could offer a glimpse at what conditions for life exist in the similar extremes of Mars and Jupiter's moon Europa.

"It's like exploring an alien planet where no one has been before. We don't know what we'll find," said Valery Lukin of Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) in St Petersburg, which oversees the expedition.

EXPLORATORY RUSH

A centenary since the first expeditions to the South Pole, the discovery of Antarctica's hidden network of subglacial lakes via satellite imagery in the late 1990s has sparked a new exploratory fervor among scientists the world over.

U.S. and British explorers are on the trail of Russia's scientists with missions to probe other buried lakes, some of the last unexplored reaches of the planet.

"It's an extreme environment but it is one that may be habitable. If it is, curiosity drives us to understand what's in it. How is it living? Is it flourishing?," said Martin Siegert, head of the University of Edinburgh's School of Geosciences, who is leading a British expedition to a smaller polar lake.

Experts say the ice sheet acts like a duvet, trapping in the Earth's geothermal heat and preventing the lakes from freezing.

Sediment from the lake could take scientists back millions of years to tropical prehistoric times, the AARI's Lukin said.

OASIS UNDER THE ICE

Lake Vostok, about the size of Lake Baikal in Siberia, is the largest, deepest and most isolated of Antarctica's 150 subglacial lakes. It is supersaturated with oxygen, resembling no other known environment on Earth.

"The Russians are leading the way with a torch," said John Priscu of Montana State University, a chief scientist with the U.S. program to explore another Antarctic lake.

Beneath the endless white landscape, Priscu suspects creatures may lurk, far from the sunlight, around thermal vents in the depths of Lake Vostok.

"I think Lake Vostok is an oasis under the ice sheet for life. It would be really wild to thoroughly sample... But until we learn how to get into the system cleanly that's an issue," he told Reuters.

The low-lying, snow-drift buildings and radio towers of Vostok Station sit above the eponymous lake. The borehole, pumped full of Kerosene and Freon to keep it from freezing shut, hangs poised over the pristine lake.

The explorers now face the question: How do we go where no one has gone before without spoiling it or bringing back some foreign virus?

"I feel very excited but once we do it there is no going back," Alexei Ekaikin, a scientist with the expedition said from Vostok Station. "Once you touch it, it will be touched forever."

(Editing by Janet Lawrence)

http://planetark.org/wen/61111

"Fraser's Penguins" Documents Stark Climate Change in the Antarctic

Bill Fraser’s decades-long research on the impact of climate change on the Antarctic Peninsula's decreasingly icy ecosystem—and, most famously, its tuxedoed inhabitants—is the subject of a new book.


Fraser’s Penguins: A Journey to the Future in Antarctica (Henry Holt and Co., $26) details the five months Yale Environment 360 senior editor and author Fen Montaigne ( Reeling in Russia ) spent in Antarctica with the ecologist studying thousands of Adélie penguins during their breeding season.

“It’s the tale of how Fraser came to believe—and I think it’s widely accepted now—that warming is the main cause behind the drop in the penguin populations,” Montaigne told SolveClimate News.

In a narrative cataloguing the day-to-day research on the Adélie penguins conducted by Fraser’s team, Montaigne also delves into the natural history of Antarctica; its allure for explorers like Sir Ernest Shackleton, whose ship Endurance was trapped and slowly crushed by pack ice; and the sharp impact of global warming on a pristine, unearthly environment that Montaigne calls “the closest thing to heaven on Earth.”

Since 1974, Fraser, a researcher with the Palmer Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) and president of Polar Oceans Research Group, has been studying the ecosystem of the northwestern Antarctic Peninsula, where the midwinter temperature has risen 11°F in just 60 years, making it one of the three most rapidly warming regions on the planet. (The other two are Siberia and the Arctic.)

Montaigne first visited Antarctica in 2004 to cover Fraser’s research for National Geographic. He spent a month tailing the scientist from his base at Palmer Station, one of three U.S. research centers on Antarctica.

In that month he was “so taken with the place, and the penguins, and how dramatic the warming was” that he was inspired to dig deeper into the subject.

Among other events he witnessed, notable was the collapse of a “big, big chunk” of ice hundreds of feet wide from the Marr Ice Piedmont glacier. Once connected to a rocky peninsula, “it just collapsed because the ice was retreating so fast,” Montaigne said. When it fell, it opened up a channel between two bodies of water that had been separated for thousands of years.

Melting Sea Ice Triggers Cascade Effect
Funded by an Antarctic Artists and Writers Grant from the National Science Foundation, Montaigne returned in October 2005 as an unpaid member of Fraser’s three-person birding team. He spent five months weighing, tagging and counting Adélie penguins in a 15-mile-wide research area near Palmer Station.

Since the mid 1970s, the penguin population in this zone has dropped some 85 percent to about 5,000, a depletion rate mirrored in other colonies on the northwestern Antarctic Peninsula. There are some 2.5 million Adélie penguins in all of Antarctica.

The main cause is melting sea ice in the Southern Ocean surrounding the Antarctic Peninsula where glaciers have retreated nearly 90 percent in the last three decades. There are now three fewer months of sea ice every year than there were in 1979, which means fewer krill larvae at the sea-ice edge and fewer silverfish eggs able to take refuge and mature beneath it.

Penguins use the sea ice as a feeding platform to feed on both, which means that the lack of sea ice is a triple whammy. It lowers the penguins' two main food sources at the same time that it limits their access to an increasingly slim supply.


Higher sea and air temperatures have also led to both more snow and more snow melt, both of which are problematic for the penguins. Deeper snowfall makes it harder to build nests. And once the snow melts, penguins find their eggs swimming in pools of icy water.


Meanwhile, Gentoo penguins are moving south to Antarctica, replacing the Adélies. Where there were once few fur seals there are now thousands.

“Ice-loving, ice-dependent species are fairing poorly, and ice-avoiding species are moving in. It’s kind of a natural process,” Montaigne said, hastening to add, “I’m not saying it’s a good process.”

Fraser’s Penguins documents the impact of climate change in a region that is on a longer time curve than the Arctic.

“Antarctica is a huge ice sheet one and a half times the size of the U.S. that is sometimes three miles deep,” Montaigne noted. “So it’s going to be a long time before it begins to melt in earnest. But warming has already breached this fortress of ice. That’s what’s important. Warming is more than nibbling at the edges. Warming has come to Antarctica.”

The question is, Montaigne said, “Once it hits in earnest, can we bar the door? In 50 years, 100 years, sea levels are going to just surge.”


By Jennifer Pinkowski at SolveClimate

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS381823940120101110

"Fraser's Penguins" Documents Stark Climate Change in the Antarctic

Bill Fraser’s decades-long research on the impact of climate change on the Antarctic Peninsula's decreasingly icy ecosystem—and, most famously, its tuxedoed inhabitants—is the subject of a new book.


Fraser’s Penguins: A Journey to the Future in Antarctica (Henry Holt and Co., $26) details the five months Yale Environment 360 senior editor and author Fen Montaigne ( Reeling in Russia ) spent in Antarctica with the ecologist studying thousands of Adélie penguins during their breeding season.

“It’s the tale of how Fraser came to believe—and I think it’s widely accepted now—that warming is the main cause behind the drop in the penguin populations,” Montaigne told SolveClimate News.

In a narrative cataloguing the day-to-day research on the Adélie penguins conducted by Fraser’s team, Montaigne also delves into the natural history of Antarctica; its allure for explorers like Sir Ernest Shackleton, whose ship Endurance was trapped and slowly crushed by pack ice; and the sharp impact of global warming on a pristine, unearthly environment that Montaigne calls “the closest thing to heaven on Earth.”

Since 1974, Fraser, a researcher with the Palmer Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) and president of Polar Oceans Research Group, has been studying the ecosystem of the northwestern Antarctic Peninsula, where the midwinter temperature has risen 11°F in just 60 years, making it one of the three most rapidly warming regions on the planet. (The other two are Siberia and the Arctic.)

Montaigne first visited Antarctica in 2004 to cover Fraser’s research for National Geographic. He spent a month tailing the scientist from his base at Palmer Station, one of three U.S. research centers on Antarctica.

In that month he was “so taken with the place, and the penguins, and how dramatic the warming was” that he was inspired to dig deeper into the subject.

Among other events he witnessed, notable was the collapse of a “big, big chunk” of ice hundreds of feet wide from the Marr Ice Piedmont glacier. Once connected to a rocky peninsula, “it just collapsed because the ice was retreating so fast,” Montaigne said. When it fell, it opened up a channel between two bodies of water that had been separated for thousands of years.

Melting Sea Ice Triggers Cascade Effect
Funded by an Antarctic Artists and Writers Grant from the National Science Foundation, Montaigne returned in October 2005 as an unpaid member of Fraser’s three-person birding team. He spent five months weighing, tagging and counting Adélie penguins in a 15-mile-wide research area near Palmer Station.

Since the mid 1970s, the penguin population in this zone has dropped some 85 percent to about 5,000, a depletion rate mirrored in other colonies on the northwestern Antarctic Peninsula. There are some 2.5 million Adélie penguins in all of Antarctica.

The main cause is melting sea ice in the Southern Ocean surrounding the Antarctic Peninsula where glaciers have retreated nearly 90 percent in the last three decades. There are now three fewer months of sea ice every year than there were in 1979, which means fewer krill larvae at the sea-ice edge and fewer silverfish eggs able to take refuge and mature beneath it.

Penguins use the sea ice as a feeding platform to feed on both, which means that the lack of sea ice is a triple whammy. It lowers the penguins' two main food sources at the same time that it limits their access to an increasingly slim supply.


Higher sea and air temperatures have also led to both more snow and more snow melt, both of which are problematic for the penguins. Deeper snowfall makes it harder to build nests. And once the snow melts, penguins find their eggs swimming in pools of icy water.


Meanwhile, Gentoo penguins are moving south to Antarctica, replacing the Adélies. Where there were once few fur seals there are now thousands.

“Ice-loving, ice-dependent species are fairing poorly, and ice-avoiding species are moving in. It’s kind of a natural process,” Montaigne said, hastening to add, “I’m not saying it’s a good process.”

Fraser’s Penguins documents the impact of climate change in a region that is on a longer time curve than the Arctic.

“Antarctica is a huge ice sheet one and a half times the size of the U.S. that is sometimes three miles deep,” Montaigne noted. “So it’s going to be a long time before it begins to melt in earnest. But warming has already breached this fortress of ice. That’s what’s important. Warming is more than nibbling at the edges. Warming has come to Antarctica.”

The question is, Montaigne said, “Once it hits in earnest, can we bar the door? In 50 years, 100 years, sea levels are going to just surge.”


By Jennifer Pinkowski at SolveClimate

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS381823940120101110

New invertebrate species from the Antarctic:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-05/f-sf-nso052610.php

Submitted by Chad Arment