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Julian Gutt, Alfred Wegener Institute
An icefish caught on camera on the Antarctic seafloor. The fish have a natural antifreeze chemical in their blood and body fluids that allow them to survive in frigid temperatures.
By Megan Gannon
LiveScience
The strange creatures that thrive on the bottom of the chilly ocean surrounding Antarctica have been revealed in a comprehensive collection of snapshots and datasets now available online.
The database, published as part of a paper in the journal Nature Conservation, covers the frozen continent's macrobenthic organisms, creatures that live on the seafloor and are big enough to be seen by the naked eye.
This community includes spiny echinoderms, sponges, crustaceans as well as some bottom-dwelling fish that are uniquely adapted to the region's ice-laden waters — for instance, icefish (Notothenioidei), which have a natural antifreeze chemical in their blood and body fluids that allow them to survive in frigid temperatures.
Though the underwater picture collection goes back only to the mid-1980s, the entire database draws on information collected using dredges and trawls, in addition to towed and remote-controlled cameras, from about 90 different expeditions in the region since 1956. The database is also geo-referenced, meaning each bit of data is linked to the precise location where it was collected by researchers studying the Antarctic seafloor. [See Images of the Antarctic Creatures]
"The most important achievement of this paper is that data collected over many years and by various institutions are now not only freely available for anyone to download and use, but also properly described to facilitate future work in reusing the data," said the paper's lead author, Julian Gutt of the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research in Germany.
Julian Gutt, Alfred Wegener Institute
This photograph was taken at the bottom of the Weddell Sea during an expedition in 1988.
The vast majority of information in the data collection comes from Antarctica's seafloor shelf, at depths shallower than about 2,600 feet (800 meters).
The researchers say and the database aims to aid scientists studying the biodiversity of the pristine region. The authors also note that only a few marine habitats are currently protected in Antarctica, and they say their data collection could inform proposals for bigger Marine Protected Areas in, for example, the Ross Sea, a region that straddles the dividing line between East and West Antarctica.
Last year, the United States submitted a proposal to create a protected area in the Ross Seaspanning 700,000 square-miles (1.8 million square kilometers). If accepted by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, the proposal would put limitations on fishing in certain areas to help preserve habitats for iconic species, such as whales and emperor penguins, and maintain viable stocks of commercially valuable fish.
The U.S. proposal, along with others from New Zealand and the United Kingdom, was not accepted during the independent commission's meeting in Hobart, Australia, in October, but the group plans to take up the issue again this summer at a special session in Germany.
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I find it astounding that we know more about space, with its incredible creations, billions of light years away, then we do about our vast oceans, right at our feet. Truly we need to wake up, put forth much more effort, to not only discover what incredible treasures exist in the oceans and seas, but to also preserve them. Before it is too late, and we discover to our terrible regret, we have doomed ourselves, destroyed the circle of precious life, which is critical to the balance of all life on earth.
Have we not learned by now, nature made everything for a deliberate reason, nothing was created to be wasted and serves no purpose? Yet man is the only life form which can choose its destiny and purpose. Let each of us encourage all to stop abusing the earth and destroying what nature has created. Learning the secrets of life this world has created.
The problem is, although we can make behavior choices, many of them are only apparently 'free will,' and are actually driven by underlying forces. That is, even our ability to control and direct ourselves is, ironically, not really under our control in the big picture, because it evolved from, and derives its energy from, instinctual reactions.
And that is why man is using all that wonderful abundant natural stuff like coal and oil. Nature has provided man with the means to increase his standard of living by having sources of cheap, abundant, reliable energy. Coal is stored solar power. Nature used the high levels of CO2 in the air in the past along with sunlight and the Earth grew greener and lusher than it has ever been. Plants grow stronger and faster with more CO2. Plants are also more drought tolerant and more water efficient with more CO2. Nature stored all that CO2 waiting for the day when it could be released again so that the Earth would once again benefit and return to its former green and lush existence.
The Earth is already greening from the recent increase in CO2. Parts of the Sahara desert are greening. A recent study says that the rain forest will benefit from more CO2.
http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2012/08/01/earth-still-absorbing-co2-even-emissions-rise-says-new-cu-led-study
Here is a great read on the paradise the Earth was in the past.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/24/back-to-the-future-paradise-lost-or-paradise-regained/
People are thinking on such short time spans when they talk about what is happening in the present. The Earth has been both warmer and colder time and again long before man was around. How conceited of us to think that we have any power and any say on how things are supposed to be.