Latest Southern Ocean Stories
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online The development of the sea-ice ecosystem in the circum-Antarctic Southern Ocean may have triggered further adaptation and evolution of larger organisms such as baleen whales and penguins, according to a new study published Thursday in the journal Science. The area’s ecosystem can be traced back to the emergence of the Antarctic ice sheets some 33.6 million years ago and plays an important role in global marine food webs and...
Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research Reliable information on the depth and floor structure of the Southern Ocean has so far been available for only few coastal regions of the Antarctic. An international team of scientists under the leadership of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, has for the first time succeeded in creating a digital map of the entire Antarctic seafloor. The International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online One would not assume that cloud cover over Antactica's Southern Ocean could cause rainfall in Zambia or the tropical island of Java. New research from the University of Washington, however, finds that a phantom band of rainfall just south of the equator that does not occur in reality is caused by poor simulation of the cloud cover thousands of miles farther to the south. This illusionary band of rainfall is one of the most persistent...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The heat has been rising in the Southern Ocean as Japanese whalers and conservationists have been going head-to-head (or keel-to-keel in this case) in an all out war over whale hunting. In the latest clash, the Japanese whaling ship Nisshin Maru has reportedly rammed as many as four conservation ships at sea. Captain Paul Watson, the founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS), said on his Facebook page: “The Nisshin...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Scientists at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), Southampton have discovered the location of an underwater volcanic vent in the Southern Ocean. In a study published this week in the journal PLOS ONE, the researchers describe how this vent, marked by a low-lying plume of shimmering water, differs from "classic" hydrothermal vents. The research group used the NOC’s high-resolution deep-towed camera platform SHRIMP to image the...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A battle is brewing over whaling in the Southern Ocean between Australia and Japan. Australia's Environment Minister, Tony Burke, has reiterated his government's strong opposition to Japan's "scientific whaling" program, dismissing claims that the expeditions have any scientific research merit. "There is nothing scientific about going out and chasing whales, aiming a harpoon at them, so that you can pull them in and chop them up for...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online An international team of researchers has uncovered the first evidence that marine creatures living in the Antarctic region are being affected by ocean acidification. That evidence was discovered in 2008, when researchers from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the University of East Anglia (UEA), the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) observed that the shells...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A National Science Foundation (NSF) supported research team retrieved data from a sensor in Antarctic waters that they hope will provide critical baseline data for the acidification, or chemical changes, in those remote seas. Led by Gretchen Hofmann – professor of ecology, evolution and marine biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) – the all female team retrieved the sensor earlier this month following the...
Part of NSF's International Polar Year research portfolio, the six-nation study indicates that shallow-water populations have little in common Differing contributions of freshwater from glaciers and streams to the Arctic and Southern oceans appear to be responsible for the fact that the majority of microbial communities that thrive near the surface at the Poles share few common members, according to an international team of researchers, some of whom were supported by the National Science...
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Using a fleet of robotic floats, a team of British and Australian scientists have uncovered the mechanism in the Southern Ocean that sequesters around 40 percent of the world’s carbon emissions. A report on the team’s research, which was published this week in Nature Geoscience, showed that “mixed-layer depth, ocean currents, wind and eddies” create plunging currents that draw atmospheric carbon deep into the ocean, where it...
Latest Southern Ocean Reference Libraries
The White-chinned Petrel (Procellaria aequinoctialis), is a large seabird in the family Procellariidae. It ranges around the Southern Ocean as far north as South Australia, Peru and Namibia, and breeds colonially on scattered islands; South Georgia, Prince Edward Islands, Crozet Islands, Kerguelen Islands, Auckland Island, Campbell Island and Antipodes Islands. The diet of the White-chinned Petrel is composed mainly of krill, followed by fish. White-chinned Petrels feed by surface...
The Southern driftfish or ragfish, Icichthys australis, is a medusafish of the genus Icichthys found circumpolar in all southern oceans between latitudes 50° S and 60° S, from the surface down to 1.24 mi (2,000 m). Its length is from 13.78 to 31.50 in (35 to 80 cm). The southern driftfish is similar to the rudderfish, and has soft easily-damaged fins, large eyes, and a small flexible mouth. Its flesh is soft and its bones are weakly ossified, giving rise to its second common name as...
The Wandering Albatross, (Diomedea exulans), is a large seabird from the family Diomedeidae which has a circumpolar range in the Southern Ocean. At breeding time they occupy loose colonies on isolated island groups in the Southern Ocean, such as Crozet Islands, South Georgia, Marion Island, Prince Edward Island, Kerguelen and Macquarie Island. Together with the Tristan, Antipodean and Amsterdam Albatross it forms the Wandering Albatross species complex. The Wandering Albatross has the...
