Publications database

Baleen whales are extreme capital breeders, capable of fasting for more than half a year while migrating thousands of kilometres and nursing rapidly growing offspring that quadruple in body size over the same period. To understand this energetic conundrum…

Incidental mortality in fisheries is a major driver of population declines for albatrosses and petrels globally. However, accurate identification of species can be difficult due to the poor condition of bycaught birds and/or visual similarities between closely related species.

The development of the Antarctic ozone hole in late winter and spring (September–November) is the most … noticeable phenomenon in the polar stratosphere. It has appeared every season since the early 1980s within the … stratospheric polar vortex…

Antarctic terrestrial biodiversity faces multiple threats, from invasive species to climate change. Yet no large-scale assessments of threat management strategies exist. Applying a structured participatory approach…

Mass loss of the Antarctic ice sheet is largest in the Amundsen Sea Embayment, West Antarctica, due to basal melting by warm modified Circumpolar Deep Water (mCDW).

The weaning mass of southern elephant seal pups (Mirounga leonina) is a key predictor of their first-year survival probability. However, variations in pup morphometric characteristics (length, mass and body condition i.e. the residual of the allometric relationship between log(mass) and log(length))…

Aim … Polar and alpine plants live at the edge of their physiological limits. Thus, relatively small changes in climate can have disproportionate effects on biological and ecological processes. Antarctic mosses display highly variable micro-topography (canopy architecture)…

Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) is the central prey species in the Southern Ocean food web, supporting the largest and fastest-growing fishery in the region, managed by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR).

Deep chlorophyll maxima (DCMs) have long been studied in the northern hemisphere but have received less attention in the Southern Ocean. Their contribution to phytoplankton biomass and net primary productivity (NPP) is poorly resolved. Recently…

Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) are integral to Southern Ocean pelagic ecosystems. Winters with extensive sea ice have been linked to high post-larval krill recruitment the following spring, suggesting that sea ice plays a critical role in larval overwinter survival.

An unprecedented decline in Antarctic sea ice extent (SIE) in late 2016 ended a weak mutidecadal expansion. Multiple mechanisms have been hypothesized to explain this decline, including large-scale atmospheric influences—a strong zonal wave 3 (ZW3)…

We present a synthesis of marine soft sediment macrofaunal communities from the Vestfold Hills, East Antarctica, spanning historical data (1978–1982) and recent surveys from 47 locations (2010–2021). We examined relationships between environmental conditions…

1. Marine invasive species can cause irreparable change in new environments, though not all non-native … species inevitably cause negative impacts to recipient … ecosystems.

Using high-precision ice core measurements of CO2, ?13C-CO2, CH4, and N2O, this study provides carbon isotope constraints on a sizeable, centennial-scale CO2 jump at the onset of Marine Isotope Stage 9 (MIS 9). The very end of the Heinrich stadial (HS) characterizing Termination IV (T-IV, ca.

In the Subantarctic Southern Ocean, primary productivity is predominantly limited by seasonal changes in light and iron (Fe) availability, shaping the phytoplankton community and impacting the magnitude of the biological carbon pump. However, quantifying the seasonal iron cycle is challenging…

Over the last decade, the Southern Ocean has experienced episodes of severe sea ice area decline. Abrupt events of sea ice loss are challenging to predict, in part due to … incomplete understanding of processes occurring at the scale of individual ice floes. Here, we use high-resolution altimetry…

Much of the Antarctic coast is covered by seasonal landfast sea ice (fast ice), which serves as an … important habitat for ice algae. Fast?ice algae provide a key early season food source for pelagic and benthic … food webs, and contribute to biogeochemical cycling in Antarctic coastal ecosystems.

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are a commonly used management tool to safeguard marine life from anthropogenic impacts, yet their efficacy often remains untested.

Historical atmospheric H2 levels were reconstructed using firn air measurements from two sites in Greenland (NEEM and Summit) and two sites in Antarctica (South Pole and Megadunes). A joint reconstruction based on the two Antarctic sites yields H2 levels monotonically increasing from about 330?

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are a commonly used management tool to safeguard marine life from anthropogenic impacts, yet their efficacy often remains untested.

A proportion of the southern elephant seal (Mirounga leonina) population that breeds in the Kerguelen Plateau region seasonally migrates between their natal sub-Antarctic islands and moult haul-out locations on the Antarctic coastline.

Antarctic climate warming and atmospheric CO2 rise during the last deglaciation may be attributed in part to sea ice reduction in the Southern Ocean. Yet, glacial–interglacial Antarctic sea ice dynamics and underlying mechanisms are poorly constrained, as robust sea ice proxy evidence is sparse.

Non-photochemical quenching (NPQ) within phytoplankton cells often causes the daytime suppression of chlorophyll fluorescence in the Southern Ocean.

Large-scale modes of atmospheric variability in the southern midlatitudes can influence Antarctic sea ice concentrations (SIC) via diverse processes. For instance, variability in both the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) and zonal wave 3 (ZW3) have been linked to the abrupt 2015/16 sea ice decline.

We tracked adult emperor penguins from Rothschild Island, west Antarctic Peninsula in 2015/2016 during a summer with extensive sea ice of long duration, contrasting with past years of reduced sea ice extent associated with the recent, rapid, warming trend across the region.