NIWA's research vessel Tangaroa docked in Wellington. Photo: RNZ / Anneke Smith
A group of 20 scientists from New Zealand - and abroad - are about to head to the bottom of the world to study the impacts of climate change on Antarctica's Ross Sea.
NIWA's Tangaroa research vessel will leave Wellington this afternoon and take about eight days to get to the Ross Ice Shelf, more than 3500km south of Aotearoa.
It will spend about a month along the Ross Sea coastline, mapping and sampling the biodiversity of marine communities and deploying ocean-monitoring robots.
NIWA oceanographer and co-voyage lead Craig Stevens said the science carried out on the voyage would help to better understand the impacts of climate change in the region and the rest of the globe.
"We have been monitoring what we believe to be the critical heat and salt corridor for the Ross Ice Shelf. If we can pin this down, we will be able to focus the next steps on the critical melt region - and from which so much else is impacted."
From left, co-voyage leads and NIWA oceanographers Denise Fernandez and Craig Stevens, and University of Otago Professor of Marine Sciences Miles Lamare. Photo: RNZ / Anneke Smith
Stevens said the expedition was sailing into waters that were feeling the effects of continual record-breaking low sea ice conditions.
"This lack of ice is having knock-on effects for not only the regional ocean but the whole planet. This work is very sweet and sour. It is amazing to get the opportunity to advance the science, but at the same time, we are catching glimpses of a future for the planet that we really want to avoid.
"It brings home in a very tangible way the need to limit emissions of climate-affecting gasses."
NIWA oceanographer and co-voyage lead Denise Fernandez, a specialist in ocean-monitoring robots Argo floats, said she would be deploying two floats to capture more data - like the temperature, salt and oxygen levels of the ocean.
"They are the first of their type to be deployed for New Zealand and are equipped with extra sensors allowing us to examine oxygen and chlorophyll levels.
This will help fill an observational gap and provide a better picture of the wider changes in the state of the ocean and the marine food web," she said.
A precision camera to help scientists map the sea floor. Photo: RNZ / Anneke Smith
Scientists from all over the world - Australia, Europe, India and the UK - have joined the trip.
Hugh Carter is a curator of marine invertabrate at the Natural History Museum and was investigating what has changed since explorers Scott and Shackleton visited the Ross Ice Shelf.
"We material that was collected by Scott and Shackleton, from the museum back in London, from pretty much the same place the Tangaroa is going to go to on this expedition.
"The hope is that we'll be able to collect some of the same species to be able to compare them over the last 120 years, which is quite exciting."
Carter said he would comparing specimans like sea urchins he found on the voyage to those more than a century old in the museum.
"I had a couple of students over the summer who went into the archives. We found the notebook of the chief zoologist on Scott's expedition and in the back of that wa a single, loose sheet of paper that had all the stations on it and exactly where they collected them from."
A float or ocean-monitoring robot that monitors the ocean's heat, salt and oxygen. Photo: RNZ / Anneke Smith
University of Otago Professor of Marine Sciences Miles Lamare said it was an exciting prospect.
"This is an opportunity. When you think of the length of time that people have been working in the Ross Sea it's not that long and if we're trying to detect changes, we're looking for clever ways of teasing out some of that change and this is one tool that might be useful."
Lamare was leading the expedition's work to explore seafloor habitats and biological communities to determine how the changing ocean is impacting marine life.
"With this information we can better forecast how these communities will respond to future warming.
"This will include observing regions likely never sampled before, and which contain many species uniquely adapted to these regions."
This voyage marks the Tangaroa's 16th trip to Antarctica and the furtherest south the vessel has ever been.
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