SA scientists take part in Antarctic research voyage

The trip aimed to pool knowledge to better understand the Southern Ocean system

THE polar regions are more critically affected by climate change than any other region on Earth, and on the Antarctic continent and its surrounding oceans, the effects of climate change are likely to be dramatic and include large-scale catastrophic ice melt, loss of habitat and biodiversity, and rising sea levels.

And for Durban marine microbial genetics scientist Sam Waterworth, a recent trip to Antarctica was an opportunity to lend her skills to an international effort to understand these changes.

The trip, organised by the Swiss Polar Institute, consisted of three legs: South Africa to Australia, Australia to South America and then back to South Africa.

According to the Swiss Polar Institute, South Africa was the only African country to have submitted a successful application to the project, which dealt with a multidisciplinary, multiresolution approach to understanding nutrient cycling and microbial diversity in changing Sub-Antarctic ecosystems.

“The expedition began on December 20, 2016, and the ship is due to dock back in Cape Town on March 18. The general schedule includes stops at key islands, such as Marion Island, Macquarie Island and South Georgia, to name a few,” Waterworth said.

Waterworth went on the first leg of the journey.

“Essentially, the trip is around Antarctica, rather than to it, but the teams on the trip’s second leg did get to stop off at the Mertz glacier, which is part of the actual continent.”

Waterworth said the purpose of the trip was for global scientists from various disciplines to gather and pool their knowledge to better understand the Southern Ocean system.

The expedition consisted of 22 individual projects with 55 researchers from 30 different countries.

Waterworth said the Southern Ocean was a key factor in the regulation of the global climate as it was the meeting and mixing point of the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. The waters connected the different ocean basins by linking the shallow and deep limbs of the global ocean current system, and played a critical role in storing and distributing heat and carbon dioxide.

“Project 12 (the South African project) aims to investigate the microbial world within the Southern Ocean and, more importantly, the Southern Ocean island systems, in conjunction with the chemical and physical parameters in which they live in order to assess their role in carbon and nitrogen cycling within the Southern Ocean,” she said.

Waterworth’s role in the project was the collection of bacterial samples.

“The goal of the project is to use microbial diversity (where ‘microbial’ refers to phytoplankton, bacteria, and zooplankton) and metabolic activity in conjunction with measured chemical and physical parameters to develop an integrated model of the island systems in order to better understand their role in Southern Ocean productivity,” Waterworth said.