| Arctic
ocean depths teeming with life
Reuters
Posted Aug 2, 2005
OTTAWA, Ontario (Reuters) -- The remotest depths of the
Arctic ocean are surprisingly full of life, including previously
unknown species of jellyfish and worms, a scientific team
which just finished exploring the area said on Friday.
The scientists, led by the University of Alaska, used robot
submarines and sonar to probe an isolated 12,470-foot (3,800-meter)
basin off Canada's Arctic coast where they fear species
could be at risk from global warming.
"We were surprised by the abundance and the diversity
of life in this environment. Even at a depth of 3,000 meters
we found animals on the sea floor, we found sea cucumbers
... and all kinds of jellyfish and crustaceans," said
Rolf Gradinger of the University of Alaska, the chief scientist
on the voyage.
"Some of the species that we saw are completely new
to science, they have not been described in any area of
the earth so far," he told reporters on a conference
call. The species are a jellyfish and three kinds of benthic
bristle worms.
The team also found unexpectedly high numbers of cod as
well as the first squid, octopus and flea-like crustaceans
ever seen in an icy environment.
Scientists from the United States, Canada, Russia and China
spent 30 days on the U.S. icebreaker Healy as part of a
$1 billion, 10-year global Census of Marine Life funded
by governments, companies and private donors.
The Healy returned on Tuesday with thousands of specimens
from the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas and the Canada Basin,
a vast bowl walled by steep ridges and covered with ice.
The team said the data would help measure the impact of
climate change and, should polar caps continue receding,
the damage done by increased energy exploitation, fishing
and shipping.
"This is a benchmark and we hope that in the next
10, 20 or 30 years these kinds of studies will be repeated
to see whether any kinds of changes have occurred in the
composition and the abundance of animal life," said
Gradinger.
U.N. studies say the Arctic could be largely ice-free in
summer by 2100 because of global warming, blamed mostly
on gas emissions from cars, power plants and factories.
The scientists say that if the northern polar cap melts,
more southerly species could enter Arctic waters and disrupt
the ecology.
The team also said explorers would carry out similar studies
in the Southern Ocean around the Antarctic, where conditions
are much less settled than in the Canada Basin.
"Scientists now theorize the swirling Southern Ocean
current is an evolutionary caldron, upwelling Antarctic
nutrients and mixing life forms from the Pacific, Indian
and Atlantic oceans, returning them in centrifuge-like fashion,"
the team said in a statement.
The Australian Antarctic Division in Hobart will lead the
project from December 2007 to March 2008. It will involve
up to 200 scientists from 30 countries and take samples
from as deep as 16,500 feet (5,000 meters).
"Because the Southern Ocean appears to be so critical
to the biology of the global ocean system, scientists are
eager to understand how continued climate change, if realized,
will affect it and the other oceans in turn," the team
said.
Reuters
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