Antarctic Iceberg's "Web of Life"
Recent studies and eye-witness accounts have seen a drastic increase in the amount of icebergs breaking away from Antarctica. This has been caused by the increase in global warming, with a retreat in the ice shelf surrounding mainland Antarctica.
However one bit of good news is making its way out of this, with scientists recently discovering an unexpected abundance of life surrounding these floating mammoths of ice in the Weddell Sea, part of the Antarctic's Southern Ocean. The ice shelves which used to extend roughly 3900 square-miles over the Weddell Sea completely disappeared by 2002.
It was in this sea that Shackleton's ship, the Endurance was trapped and crushed by ice in 1915.
The researchers, led by Kenneth L. Smith Jr., of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, California, found an abundance of life existing up to two and a half miles away from icebergs in his studies.
"Just as water-holes become "hotspots" in the desert, drifting icebergs are like oases in Antarctic's ocean," said Russell R. Hopcroft of the Institute of Marine Science at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, who was not part of the research team.
The new study found that melting icebergs release nutrients into the sea, which allow tiny marine plants called phytoplankton to bloom. Shrimp-like crustaceans congregate around the icebergs to feast on the plants, and seabirds feed on the them.
Evidence of an abundance of life has been known to exist around the edge of an ice pack, but this is the first scientific evidence of it existing around a floating berg. Anecdotal evidence was the only available evidence prior to the study, with many sighting the large amount of seagulls as proof of this.
Another happy coincidence to arise out of this evident truth of global-warming is the chance that these drifting icebergs will provide “...a route for carbon dioxide drawdown and sequestration of particulate carbon as it sinks into the deep sea," according to team leader Kenneth L. Smith.
"Free-floating icebergs can serve as a route for carbon dioxide drawdown and sequestration of particulate carbon as it sinks into the deep sea," Smith said. "While the melting of Antarctic ice shelves is contributing to rising sea levels and other climate change dynamics in complex ways, this additional role of removing carbon from the Antarctic Icebergs, hotspots of ocean life atmosphere may have implications for global climate models that need to be further studied."
"Based on their new understanding of the impacts of the icebergs and their growing numbers, the researchers counted close to 1,000 in satellite images of some 4,300 square miles of ocean, the scientists estimate that overall the icebergs are raising the biological productivity of nearly 40 percent of the Weddell Sea's area.
Posted by Josh Hill with Casey Kazan.
Comments