The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) approved the new high seas marine protected area south of the South Orkney Islands in the Antarctic Peninsula Region. The Commission further agreed to a work plan to create networks of high seas MPAs across 11 other high priority areas in the Southern Ocean by 2012.
A unique sighting of a group of approximately 60 Arnoux’s beaked whales on the surface in the Gerlache Strait shows for the first time giant beaked whales socializing.
NASA is currently conducting Operation Ice Bridge, a six-year campaign of annual flights to each of Earth’s polar regions designed to help scientists bridge the gap between NASA’s Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) — which is operating the last of its three lasers — and ICESat-II, scheduled to launch in 2014 by providing the needed data collected by researchers on board the DC-8, a 157-foot-long airborne laboratory and the largest aircraft in NASA’s airborne science fleet that accommodates many instruments.
For the first time a team of nine researchers from UC Santa Cruz, Texas A&M University, and University of Texas started a research expedition to the Antarctic in winter. Their intention is to study the Weddell seals, the only mammal to live in McMurdo Sound during the brutal winter month and discover how they survive beneath the sea ice.
A team of international scientists will work together on a new study of the open water and ice-covered regions of the Amundsen Sea to understand the physical, chemical, and biological interactions that make this region the most biologically productive of any waters adjacent to the Antarctic continent and how the system might change in the face of future increases in regional temperature and in the rate of Antarctic glacier melting.
Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey used satellite images to search for emperor penguin colonies as penguin guano stains are visible from space.
Ice water ecosystems could drastically be changed if alien species enter the region due to warmer water conditions.
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