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It is the voyage of a lifetime yet it may prove the toughest endurance test of their lives: the cream of the country's marine scientists, swapping sterile laboratories for the pristine perils of Antarctic Ocean, on one steel boat for seven weeks.
Their scientific restraint will melt in the face of majestic icebergs, weird colours and wondrous wildlife. Participants in this experiment will need to remind themselves that the attractions could be fatal.
In the most surreal yet unforgiving of Earth's environments, they will get down to business. Their mission is to hoover up as much knowledge as they can of the marine life and habitats of the Ross Sea, an expanse of icy Antarctic water administered by New Zealand.
The 26 scientists and 18 crew who will board Niwa's research ship Tangaroa assemble in Wellington next week to prepare for the January 31 departure, and the six-day voyage to their destination. They will then spend five weeks sampling biodiversity in three areas of the Ross Sea - taking in everything from surface waters to the abyss, bacteria to whales and mud slopes to seamounts - before the slow journey home.
When conditions allow, they will exchange white coats for bulky thermals and gloves to grapple on freezing decks with unwieldy equipment to collect a myriad of organisms and data.
The Ross Sea survey is our contribution to two international scientific collaborations of global importance: the International Polar Year and the Antarctic component of the Census of Marine Life. Prime Minister Helen Clark has committed over $4 million in taxpayer funding for the voyage and 3 years of follow-up analysis.
The polar year (the first in 50 years) in fact spans March 2007-March 2009 to take in two summer seasons. The census is due for completion by 2010. The projects share lofty and timely goals: to provide baseline data to measure the impacts of climate change; to increase understanding of the drivers of variations in biodiversity; to add to knowledge of evolutionary theory and the influence of polar systems on the rest of the planet.
While Antarctica is designated a natural reserve for scientific research, its hostile environment and remoteness have left its waters under-explored. But international enthusiasm for the two scientific projects - and the spectre of climate change - have seen an armada of scientific vessels plying the Southern Ocean, mirroring a research frenzy at the opposite pole.
Agencies with a stake in the NZ survey include Niwa, MFish, Land Information NZ, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Antarctica NZ. The science programme was finalised after a fiercely contested process but the collaborative approach endured.
Our scientists can expect to see giantism, such as relatives of the 500kg, 6m-long colossal squid caught by a Nelson longliner in the Ross Sea last January. The area is home to a quarter of the world's Emperor penguins and 30 per cent of Adelie penguins and is a refuge for whales and seals. But of equal fascination will be microscopic bacteria and viruses in abyssal sediments and organisms which survive under incredible pressure and without sunlight around sulphurous vents on seamounts.
The shipboard dynamics should be just as interesting - the mission has elements of reality TV's Survivor. Scientists from Niwa, MFish, Waikato University, Victoria University, Te Papa, the US and Italy, aged from mid-20s to early-60s, will be on board. They can look forward to polar winds of up to 90 knots creating windchill of minus 30 or 40 degrees, steep swells which make going on deck impossible - and throwing up unavoidable. Many will be sharing cabins on a cramped ship. The fresh vegies will run out in week four. For the early part of the survey, 24-hour daylight will add to the challenge of sleeping. If they're lucky, conditions will be (mostly) benign enough to fulfil an ambitious survey programme. But flexibility is the watchword. Voyage leader John Mitchell: "Chances are, if we're working well away from shore it's going to be blowing, it's going to be snowing regularly and there's always ice around - you just have to work around it."
But Mitchell, a Niwa marine geologist, says the risks are known, along with the personal attributes needed to survive the voyage. "When looking at staffing you have to look both at skills and personality. We'll be living in fairly close quarters for 50 days at sea - it's a long time."
There is, of course, no voting off - or jumping ship. "If we have a medical emergency and can't cope with it on board we would have to come back." That would end the mission because of the narrow window for surveying in the far southern latitudes.
Mary Livingston knows what to expect after a smaller survey in 2006. "Everything revolves around mealbreaks and sampling," says the MFISH principal scientist. "The cold requires more effort to get dressed to go on deck in protective clothing and more effort to do the job."
"You often can't send your sampling gear down where you've planned because there is ice in the way. If you are towing equipment, the ice moves and can catch up with you."
The meticulous work of sorting biological material on deck is slower, hindered by bulky thermal suits and gloves. "Your eyes stream, your nose drips and your glasses ice up. Touching metal equipment is hazardous with bare hands. Samples freeze if they are left too long."
But Livingston says exhilaration overcame any difficulties on the 2006 visit to the western Ross Sea coastline. "Getting up for my 12-hour shift and going up to the bridge to check the plan, everyday would reveal a different vista: giant icebergs just sitting there silently outside the window, pods of whales in transit, or a sea full of pack ice with marine life looking at us quizzically as we glided by, very slowly picking our way through the leads [waterways]."
She recalls amazing light effects caused by distant squalls, ice blink (ice reflected off clouds beyond the horizon) and crystal dust (fine ice particles caught at night in the ice-light beam), the vivid green, blue and white colours and "brilliant" icebergs of all shapes and sizes, often laden with birdlife.
"It was a very inspirational trip for me. I stepped out beyond my normal world of scientific reason into creative poetry and song writing [when I got back]."
Livingston even found storms exciting. She would find a safe corner to watch from the bridge or wedge herself in her bunk and "listen to the steady beat of the engines beneath the scream of the wind and the snarl of the water just outside the cabin wall, watching clothes sway bizarrely on their hooks".
"Sleep is very difficult. Reading is hard. Showering is impossible [during rough weather].
The dry air leaves you with cracked lips and very lank hair."
The survey logistics are complex: the ship will spend about 10 days in
each of three survey areas in the north, central and southern sea, zigzagging across longitudinal lines. Within each zone several "core stations" will be selected at depths ranging from 200m to 4000m and the full suite of organisms sampled, from surface species through mid-depths to bottom-dwellers and the bacteria living in ocean floor sediments.
The aim is to measure biodiversity across a range of environments - the continental shelf, mud slopes, the abyss and seamounts - and study the effects of latitude and depth on species' distribution and abundance.
But if locations are iced over, they will have to look elsewhere. Niwa science programme leader Stu Hanchet says the ambitious survey programme will be reduced by the conditions encountered. "I think when we get there there will be parts covered by ice that we won't be able to get into."
The scientists expect to find many unnamed species. While previous surveys have explored the Ross Sea's western coast and edge of the ice shelf, the diversity of life offshore has barely been explored, says Livingston. Giantism is expected because of high oxygen levels in the very cold water.
The findings will be compared with those of about 12 other vessels surveying the waters surrounding Antarctica, which are linked by a single current. Livingston says mechanisms of transportation between apparently isolated environments are of intense scientific interest, adding to knowledge of evolutionary theory and helping to better understand the planet.
"We know that the Ross Sea ecosystem differs from other parts of the Southern Ocean in that the Antarctic silverfish is pivotal to the food chain instead of krill. We also know that the polynyas (areas of water that clear first after the winter freeze over) play a special role in the Ross sea ecosystem."
Experiments will be conducted on the effects of increasing carbon dioxide levels on surface water samples containing plankton and microbes. These will give some insight into the impacts if CO2 levels match predictions of doubling by 2050 and tripling by 2100.
The marine life is fully adapted to the polar cycles of changing daylight hours and to the freeze-melt of the pack ice, she says. But many species will be vulnerable to ocean acidification because of the low temperatures and high oxygen content. "Some species will be widespread and robust to change, while others will be finely adapted to the current dynamics of the unique environment. The food chain is less complex than that of more temperate systems and the interdependence of species is high."
Another objective is improved management of the small Antarctic toothfish fishery which New Zealand polices in the Ross Sea. The huge, groper-like toothfish feeds mainly on rattails, grenadier and icefish which are taken as bycatch but there's little knowledge of the abundance of these species and the impacts fishing is having.
The seamounts survey is expected to increase understanding of organisms which get energy from methane gases and build on earlier research at the Balleny Islands (north-west of the Ross Sea) - and could potentially lead to their protection.
The survey's comprehensive nature demands a wide range of gear. Tools include a sled which slides over the seabed, sophisticated nets for trawling which trap organisms at different depths in the water column, acoustic equipment, high tech cameras which transmit continuous video as well as still footage and core samplers to collect mud and bacteria from the bottom. What the cameras pick up will be matched with samples collected from the depths to estimate abundance.
More than 300 deployments are planned, most focusing on life on or near the ocean floor. Deploying and retrieving such a range of equipment in the extreme conditions will be far from straightforward. "The hope is that as one set is deployed the next can be set up and be ready to go," says Niwa's science project leader Stu Hanchet. "We will try to minimise downtime but everything we do down there we do slower."
Everything depends on the conditions, says Hanchet. "On the last survey I don't think it went above freezing the whole time. The wind chill can go from nothing to minus 40 or 50. It's a very harsh environment to work in. People on deck or in upper parts of the ship are going to need all the warm weather gear they can find."
But a far bigger player than the weather is the ice. The mission is timed for a "very small window" when the Ross Sea is hopefully clear of ice. But there are no guarantees, although the Tangaroa will receive regular ice imaging reports from an Australian forecaster.
Hanchet, an Antarctic veteran, says the scientists are keen to "sneak in" and sample in the southeastern Ross Sea, which is covered in ice 7 years out of 10.
While the ship's radar can detect big icebergs, smaller "growlers" are a danger. The ice-strengthened ship can push through light ice but needs to steer clear of older, thicker ice.
In the later stages of the survey, ice will be forming again although the Tangaroa will by then have moved to its third, northern survey area. By then, darkness will also come into play, says vovage leader Mitchell. "When we first get down there we'll be getting 24 hours daylight but by the time we leave there'll be 6-7 hours of darkness, ice will be forming quicker and it's harder to see icebergs."
The November sinking of the cruise ship Explorer, which hit a submerged iceberg 120km north of the Antarctic Peninsula, is a reminder that the worst can happen. "You have to be very careful. If it's rough, whitecaps and icebergs look very similar."
On deck are personal survival grab bags of clothing for all and the ship has enough tents, sleeping bags and provisions to survive up to 10 days on shore if they have to abandon ship. But the last third of the survey takes the Tangaroa well away from shore.
For all the risks, Hanchet says he could have filled the vessel five times over. "Everybody regards Antarctica as a very special place. The more we understand, the more we can make sure it stays special."
But it's not just about Antarctica, or comparing "how many snails or worms are here with there," says Hanchet. "We want to understand the environmental factors which give rise to diversity and abundance and what drives the differences in biodiversity between different locations.
"It's huge - it's the biggest thing that's happened in Antarctica in terms of a big combined survey and it's good that the Government has put its hand up.
"It's putting New Zealand science up near the top in terms of Antarctic science and the results should be highly regarded both nationally and internationally."
Mitchell, with four Ross Sea surveys behind him, has a narrower focus. "It's all my fault if things go wrong," he says.
"But we know the risks and have addressed them all.
"This is our research ship. If we don't have one it would be a problem."
Antarctic waters a haven for the weird, wonderful
The international armada encircling Antarctica expects to find an extraordinary array of undiscovered marine life in the deep, dark waters.
Little was known about the fauna in the Antarctic depths until the Andeep (Antarctic benthic deep sea) biodiversity survey involving international scientists from 2002-2005. Andeep's findings, reported in Nature last April, challenge assumptions that the freezing and lightless depths are low in biodiversity.
In the Weddell Sea, south of South America and adjoining the Antarctic Peninsula, researchers found nearly 600 species new to science, including carnivorous sponges, free-swimming worms, crustaceans and molluscs. The German and British scientists reported high levels of endemism (species unique to Antarctic waters), giantism, longevity and adaptations of species to different habitats.
Lead author Angelika Brandt, of Hamburg University, said the Southern Ocean had never really been explored. "Previous research had suggested deep sea diversity this far south would be poor, so we were surprised to find such enormous diversity."
Co-author Dr Katrin Linse, of the British Antarctic Survey, said: "Finding this extraordinary treasure trove of marine life is our first step to understanding the complex relationships between the deep ocean and the distribution of marine life."
Last February, the German icebreaker Polarstern, studying the collapsed Larsen ice shelves on the peninsula, reported new species including mobile herds of sea cucumbers, colonising sea squirts and deep-sea species at unusually shallow depths.
The marine surveys help to build understanding of what makes Antarctic ecosystems tick and the ability of fauna to survive climate change.
New Zealand's contribution will allow comparisons to be made on biodiversity and build understanding on the causes of variations in species and abundance, while providing a baseline for measuring and anticipating the impacts of climate change.
But there are many variables. Iceberg "calving" - where large chunks of freshwater ice separate from Antarctica's ice shelves and are linked to global warming - can lead to an explosion in marine life, the journal Science reported in June. Plankton, krill (eaten by whales), seabirds and seals in the Weddell Sea benefited from waters enriched by minerals from the melting icebergs.
But calving can be a geological process not necessarily caused by global warming.
And increased biological productivity from the free-floating icebergs have a carbon sink effect: carbon absorbed by phytoplankton is consumed by marine organisms that sink to the bottom when they die.
The Ross ice shelf is warming at a slower rate than the Weddell Sea but has lost one of the biggest icebergs of all - B15, 300km long, which calved in March 2000.
