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Polar regions are particularly sensitive to climate change, with the potential for significant feedbacks between ocean circulation, sea ice, and the ocean carbon cycle. However, the difficulty in obtaining in situ data means that our ability to detect and interpret change is very limited, especially in the Southern Ocean, where the ocean beneath the sea ice remains almost entirely unobserved and the rate of sea-ice formation is poorly known. Here, we show that southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) equipped with oceanographic sensors can measure ocean structure and water mass changes in regions and seasons rarely observed with traditional oceanographic platforms. In particular, seals provided a 30-fold increase in hydrographic profiles from the sea-ice zone, allowing the major fronts to be mapped south of 60°S and sea-ice formation rates to be inferred from changes in upper ocean salinity. Sea-ice production rates peaked in early winter (April?May) during the rapid northward expansion of the pack ice and declined by a factor of 2 to 3 between May and August, in agreement with a three-dimensional coupled ocean?sea-ice model. By measuring the high-latitude ocean during winter, elephant seals fill a ?blind spot? in our sampling coverage, enabling the establishment of a truly global ocean-observing system.

Investigations into Fe(II) cycling during two Southern Ocean mesoscale iron enrichment experiments, SOFeX and EIFeX, clearly show the importance of Fe(II) to iron speciation during these experiments. In both cases the added Fe(II) persisted significantly longer than its expected oxidation time indicating a significant Fe reduction process at work. During EIFeX diel studies showed a strong photochemically induced cycle in Fe(II) production in sunlit surface waters. Our results suggest that the photochemical cycling of iron may also be important in unfertilized waters of the Southern Ocean.

We present the first detailed maps of fast ice around East Antarctica (75°E–170°E), using an image correlation technique applied to RADARSAT ScanSAR images from November in 1997 and 1999. This method is based upon searching for, and distinguishing, correlated regions of the ice-covered ocean which remain stationary, in contrast to adjacent moving pack ice. Within the overlapping longitudinal range of ∼86°E–150.6°E, the total fast-ice area is 141,450 km2 in 1997 and 152,216 km2 in 1999. Calibrated radar backscatter data are also used to determine the distribution of two fast-ice classes based on their surface roughness characteristics. These are “smooth” fast ice (−25.4 dB to −13.5 dB) and “rough” fast ice (−13.5 dB to −2.5 dB). The former comprises ∼67% of the total area, with rough fast ice making up the remaining ∼33%. An estimate is made of fast-ice volume, on the basis of fast-ice type as a proxy measure of ice thickness and area. Results suggest that although fast ice forms 2–16% of the total November sea ice area for this sector of East Antarctica in 1997 and 1999 (average 8.3% across maps), it may comprise 6–57% of the total ice volume (average ∼28% across maps). Grounded icebergs play a key role in fast-ice distribution in all regions apart from 150°E–170°E. These are “snapshot” estimates only, and more work is required to determine longer-term spatiotemporal variability.

The annual trend in energy storage in the Antarctic minke whale was examined using catch data from all 18 survey years in the Japanese Whale Research Program (JARPA). Regression analyses clearly showed that blubber thickness, girth and fat weight have been decreasing for nearly 2 decades. The decrease per year is estimated at approximately 0.02 cm for mid-lateral blubber thickness and 17 kg for fat weight, corresponding to 9% for both measurements over the 18-year period. Furthermore, "date", "extent of diatom adhesion", "sex", "body length", "fetus length", "latitude", "age" and "longitude" were all identified as partially independent predictors of blubber thickness. The direct interpretation of this substantial decline in energy storage in terms of food availability is difficult, since no long-term krill abundance series is available. However, an increase in the abundance of krill feeders other than minke whales and a resulting decrease in the krill population must be considered as a likely explanation.

A distinctive halo of sea ice deformation was observed above the Maud Rise seamount in the eastern Weddell Sea in the winter of 2005. The deformation halo is coincident with a halo of low mean ice concentration that is often observed in the region. Monthly mean ice vorticity estimates for the months July through November reveal the deformation zone most clearly in an arc about 100 km northwest of the seamount where there is a strong gradient in the bathymetry at depths of 3000–5000 m. The deformation was computed from satellite-based ice motion vectors derived from Envisat Synthetic Aperture Radar backscatter images. The deformation halo is evidence of a Taylor cap circulation over the seamount, which has been described and analyzed with modeling studies and concurrent oceanographic observations obtained during an extensive field campaign.

During the austral winter of 2007 a Weddell Seal tagged with a miniaturized conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) instrument travelled over the central southern Weddell Sea continental shelf. The instrument yielded 750 CTD profiles, 250 of them to the sea floor. The data show a full depth flow of water onto the shelf via a sill at the shelf break (74°S 44°W). The warmth from the core of the flow was able to maintain the surface mixed layer above the freezing point, resulting in a band of reduced ice-production. An estimate of the on-shelf flux suggests that this flow accounts for most of the estimated 3 Sv of water draining from the southern Weddell Sea continental shelf.

During the past ten years, the Antarctic Peninsula has been identified as the most rapidly warming region of the Southern Hemisphere and it is important to place this warming in the context of the natural climate and oceanographic variability of the recent geological past. Many biological proxies, such as marine diatom assemblages, have been used to determine Southern Ocean palaeoceanographic conditions during the Late Quaternary, however, few investigations have attempted to link observations of modern floras with the fossil record. In this study we examine a suite of modern austral spring (December 2003) and summer (February 2002) surface water samples from along the western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) continental shelf and compare these to core-top, surface sediment samples. Using detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) and principal component analysis (PCA) of diatom abundance data we investigate the relationship of contemporary diatom floras with the fossil record. This multivariate analysis reveals that our modern assemblages can be divided into three groups: summer southern WAP sites, summer northern WAP sites, and spring WAP sites. Sea surface temperature (SST) is an important environmental variable for explaining seasonal differences in diatom assemblages between spring and summer, but sea surface salinity (SSS) is more important for understanding temporally-equivalent regional variations in assemblage. Our summer diatom samples are more reminiscent of early season assemblages, reflecting the unusually late sea ice retreat from the region that year. When the modern assemblages are compared to the fossil record, it is clear that most of the important diatoms from the summer assemblage are not preserved into the sediments, and that the fossil record more closely reflects spring assemblages. This observation is important for any future attempts to quantitatively reconstruct palaeoceanographic conditions along the WAP during the Late Quaternary and highlights the need for many more such studies in order to address longer timescales, such as interannual variability, in the context of the fossil record.

En rekelignende skapning i Sørishavet er Kjell Inge Røkkes nye yndling. Den kan nemlig brukes i alt fra slankemidler til fiskefôr. Men vet vi nok om krill til å slippe trålerne løs? Forskningsskipet G.O. Sars har vært på tokt for å finne u mer.

Identification of DNA sequence diversity is a powerful means for assessing the species present in environmental samples. The most common molecular strategies for estimating taxonomic composition depend upon PCR with universal primers that amplify an orthologous DNA region from a range of species. The diversity of sequences within a sample that can be detected by universal primers is often compromised by high concentrations of some DNA templates. If the DNA within the sample contains a small number of sequences in relatively high concentrations, then less concentrated sequences are often not amplified because the PCR favours the dominant DNA types. This is a particular problem in molecular diet studies, where predator DNA is often present in great excess of food-derived DNA.

Climate is altering rapidly in parts of the Arctic and Antarctic but we know little about how marine organisms are responding to, or might respond to such changes. Knowledge of within-taxon variability is the vital context (currently missing) to interpretation of environmental signals. We investigated growth in six species and three genera of erect Antarctic bryozoans, an ideal model taxon to investigate such response. Cellarinella margueritae, C. nodulata, C. rogickae, C. watersi, Melicerita obliqua and Stomhypselosaria watersi, extended 3.4, 5.2, 4.6, 4.1, 4.9 and 4.5 mm year(-1) and synthesised 24, 55, 45, 176, 34 and 46 mg CaCO3 year(-1), respectively. The maximum ages of these species ranged from 11 to 15 years except M. obliqua, which reached 32 years. This is the first investigation of growth rates of closely related Antarctic invertebrate species and reports the slowest growth rates of bryozoans known from anywhere to date. Our data coupled with that from literature shows that Antarctic bryozoan growth varies << 10(1) between species, 10(1) between genera, 10(2) between morphologies and is similar to 10(1) slower than in tropical or temperate regions. However, within encrusting types the slowest growing species grow at similar rates from poles to tropics. Age was a strong confounding factor across our Antarctic study species but age-standardised data showed a possible decline in annual growth from 1992 to 2003. We identify several factors increasing this environmental signal strength, including (1) the importance of generic (though not necessarily species) identification and (2) use of dry-mass or ash-free dry-mass as the measures of growth.