Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 04/08/2007 - 14:17
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Antarctic Undersea ROV

I am curious as to what you expect to find under the sea ice besides invertibrates.  Why were these historical experimental sites abandoned? And what do yu suppose you might find in the benthic zone after ROV-ing?

Thanks for your time
Sun, 04/22/2007 - 15:33

Mindy Bell

Great questions!  I don't know all the answers to these yet - so stay posted in October when I am in Antarctica and will know more!  But - the historical structures are in too deep of water for safe SCUBA diving - so the Remotely Operated Vehicle will mostly be a good camera to take pictures of the structures and the bottom and see what organisms have colonized there.  I don't know what they will find besides invertebrates that colonize the ocean floor (sponges? worms? we'll have to find out together!)Think about how scary it would be diving under the Antarctic sea ice.  I think the ROV will make it much safer for humans - because they can operate the camera from above the ice instead of below it!
 Mindy

Thu, 05/10/2007 - 10:24

Stacy Kim

I like your curiosity!    We expect we will find a few vertebrates (fishes) and a few algal species as well as the dominant invertebrates like the sponges Mindy mentions.  But there is very little algae near McMurdo because algae requires light to grow, and at this latitude it is dark for several months of the year.  When there is daylight the seaice dims the amount of light that reaches the seafloor to low levels that don't support enough photosynthesis for the algae to survive year round.  The historical experimental sites have not been revisited because safety regulations for Scuba diving now limit us to 40 m (130 ft).  When the experiments were set up by Dr. Paul Dayton in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Scuba safety limits were not established and so he placed them at depths over 40 m - where we now can't reach them!  It will be very satisfying to relocate his sites and help complete his experiments.  We expect that the ROV, by allowing us to access the deeper benthic habitats that are undescribed, will give us a new perspective on the overall community ecology of McMurdo Sound and we hope, the greater Antarctic region.