Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 14:21
Forums
Drake Passage Opening

Ms. Pena,

    I was reading your journal about your trip to the antartic and noticed that you had been researching the marine life there. I have a couple questions that i thought would be interesting to know cause i know that global warming is going on and i want to know which species are being affected most and how the enviroment has been changing. So here i go :).... How much marine have you been finding down there? Is there more or less than you expected? What kinds of marine life have you been finding, like what kind of species? Does there seem to be a lot of storms lately?

i know thats a lot of questions but i just thought it would be interesting to know. You dont have to answer all of them either :). 

Hope your having a great trip! Stay warm! :)

 

Mike

From, Hartford High School 

Fri, 04/25/2008 - 16:41

Katie Pena

Mike, Thanks for your questions. I will try to answer them as best I can. We have found a variety of species in the trawl, shrimp, lobsters, isopods, sponges, fish, corals (alive and fossilized), starfish, octopus, snails, and sea cucumbers.
You have to remember that we are only using the trawl in certain areas along the sea floor, so that limits what we find. The depth at which we trawl also can influence what is found. The trawl that went down 800 meters to the sea floor brought up a huge amount of marine life. At this point we are not really researching how current climate change is effecting the marine life, but the research is focused on how it and the environment was effected during the last glacial maximum.
I hope this answers some of your questions.
Thanks, Mrs. Pena