Our next speaker is Dr Jonny Stark who's going to talk about life under the ice,
Biodiversity in Antarctica's coastal ecosystems. So Jonny's a marine ecologist at AAD,
his research focuses on the effects of environmental change in coastal ecosystems,
ranging from impacts of localised human activities right through to global change.
He's done over 300 dives in Antarctica and 13 field seasons but he is now
running a mini yellow submarine, remotely operated. Jonny over to you. Thanks Nicole,
thank you so yes I'll be talking about life in Antarctic coastal marine ecosystems so
button which button is it
so Antarctic ice-free coast is actually relatively uncommon and this is because most of the Antarctic
coast consists of floating ice shelves or the continental ice sheet and shallow marine
coastal areas are actually associated generally with this relatively uncommon ice-free coast.
Now in contrast to life on the land, life in marine coastal ecosystems is is very different.
Unlike on the land, marine ecosystems life is really obvious,
it's really abundant and it's everywhere.
These are really dynamic and productive ecosystems. They support a lot of marine life.
Despite the harsh environmental conditions life is thriving on the sea floor around Antarctica.
These ecosystems are also really diverse. There's a huge range of organisms of incredible shapes,
colours and sizes. Some groups of animals have done really well in Antarctica and evolved into
many different species. In contrast there are a few other groups that are missing altogether.
This diversity extends from the macro-scale where we see fish well over a metre in length
down to animals just a few millimetres in size crawling in the sediments on the sea floor,
right down to the microscopic level. But literally the sea floor is teeming with marine life.
Some areas have developed some very special or unique communities the like of which
aren't really found anywhere else on Earth, and this is a really nice example: this is a reef
comprised of tube building polychaete worms and it has a lot of similarities with a coral reef
in terms of its structure that it provides and the diversity of life that lives on it.
Now the Antarctic coast is a really big place in Australian Antarctic Territory. There's over four
and a half thousand kilometres of coast and most of what we know about coastal Marine life comes
from just two places, Casey and Davis. There are around 36 coastal ice-free areas in Australian
Antarctic Territory and most of these we've never even visited, let alone looked underwater.
So a large majority of our Australian Antarctic Territory remains unknown to us
and this is a priority for future research to begin to address this knowledge gap.
Now Antarctic coastal ice-free areas are also where people are concentrated, it's where we
build our stations. And so there's potential for human impacts in coastal marine areas.
These impacts can arise from past legacy activities such as waste disposal,
as well as ongoing activities such as sewage, wastewater and construction.
So we need to monitor these activities to get a better understanding of the
impacts they're having so that we can improve our management in future.
Climate change also has potential for impacts in coastal ecosystems.
Coastal ecosystems are between the hammer and the anvil, if you like,
of changes occurring in the continental ice sheet and in the Southern Ocean.
So coastal systems are likely to feel the combined effects of both types of climate change and there
are likely to be significant impacts in coasts in future under climate change scenarios.
So I'm going to give you a glimpse now into life under the ice
and this is footage that was shot in Long Fjord near Davis station,
and it was shot using a state-of-the-art remotely operated vehicle system
that we designed to fit down a small hole in the sea ice. These sorts of technologies ...
...so these sorts of technologies are enabling us to get a much better understanding of these
ecosystems because with just a small team of two people, we can rapidly survey large areas
of the seabed whereas in the past we've relied on diving and focusing on a very small area.
Now many of the organisms in this video may look familiar, and some will look other-worldly,
but these same groups of animals are found throughout the world. However all these species
that you can see here are unique to Antarctica. They're all endemic to the Antarctic region
and even as an experienced marine ecologist I'm continually surprised
by the incredible diversity of life on the seafloor in our Antarctic coastal areas.
So this research addresses key scientific and government research priorities around
environmental stewardship and particularly around management and conservation,
but with particular regard to its special qualities such as its biodiversity.
We need sustained and reliable observations of Antarctic marine environments and the pressures
they're facing in order to ensure a better understanding of them and
ensure their conservation into the future. Biodiversity research provides the basis
to help develop proposals for conservation and protection of Antarctic environments.
Because in order to manage and protect these areas we need to understand what's there. We
can't protect something that we don't know about. And a really good example of this is
the incredible tubeworm reef that's found in Ellis Fjord near Davis station. This reef we
estimated is somewhere around eight kilometres long and it grows down to 30 metres deep,
and it's probably the only one of its kind in the world, at least it's the only one we're aware of
and it really is like a coral reef in terms of the amazing diversity of life it supports.
Thanks very much.