KEY POINTS:
Foreign Minister Winston Peters leaves tomorrow for a three-day trip to Scott Base in Antarctica.
Mr Peters is the Minister responsible for Antarctica, and will see first hand some of the research New Zealand is involved in on the ice.
The Government had put an extra $11.1 million over three years towards projects that were part of International Polar Year.
Projects included the Census of Antarctic Marine Life and six smaller ones such as studies on ozone hole recovery and on winter sea ice processes.
In the budget last year, the Government allocated $6.6m towards the census, a major international marine biodiversity study.
This money included $3.6m dispatching the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa) vessel Tangaroa to collect data.
The Tangaroa's trip to the Ross Sea is due to be launched tomorrow in Wellington and the plan is for Mr Peters to participate via video link from Scott Base.
The vessel's trip is scheduled to take 55 days, with 26 scientists on board, including researchers from the United States and Italy.
The scientists will collect biological samples and capture images of the seafloor down to depths of about 4000m, in unexplored areas.
New assessments of ocean acidification arising from climate change and identification of new species around Antarctica were expected.
While in Antarctica, Mr Peters will unveil a plaque to commemorate the ANDRILL Antarctic drilling project, where sediment and rock cores were collected from McMurdo Sound to chart Antarctica's role in environmental change over the past 65 million years.
Mr Peters will also visit New Zealand's research laboratory at Arrival Heights, historic huts used by early polar explorers, the United States' base at McMurdo, and go to the site of the Mt Erebus crash where all 257 people on an Air New Zealand sightseeing flight were killed in 1979.
- NZPA
