An underwater robot has captured a rare glimpse beneath the Antarctic sea ice, revealing a colourful world filled with coconut-shaped sponges, dandelion-like worms, pink algae and spidery starfish.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) took footage on a camera attached to a Remotely Operated Vehicle sent down by scientists through a small hole drilled in the ice as they recorded the acidity, oxygen, salinity and temperature of the seawater.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you think of the Antarctic coastal marine environment, the iconic species such as penguins, seals and whales usually steal the show,\u201d AAD biologist Glenn Johnstone said Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis footage reveals a habitat that is productive, colourful, dynamic and full of a wide variety of biodiversity, including sponges, sea spiders, urchins, sea cucumbers and sea stars.\u201d<\/p>\n
These species, recorded near Australia\u2019s Casey research station, live in water that is -1.5 degrees Celsius (29.3 degrees Fahrenheit) year round and covered in 1.5 metres (nearly five feet) of sea ice for 10 months of the year.<\/p>\n
\u201cOccasionally an iceberg may move around and wipe out an unlucky community, but mostly the sea ice provides protection from the storms that rage above, making it a relatively stable environment in which biodiversity can flourish,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Scientists are in Antarctica working on better understanding the impact of acidification on Southern Ocean sea-floor communities under increasing carbon dioxide emissions.<\/p>\n
Project leader Johnny Stark said a quarter of the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere was absorbed by the ocean, which increases its acidity.<\/p>\n
\u201cCarbon dioxide is more soluble in cold water and polar waters are acidifying at twice the rate of tropical or temperate regions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we expect these ecosystems to be among the first impacted from ocean acidification.\u201d\u2014AFP<\/em><\/p>\n Image:\u00a0http:\/\/www.antarctica.gov.au\/ (Dominic Hall)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An underwater robot has captured a rare glimpse beneath the Antarctic sea ice, revealing a colourful world filled with coconut-shaped sponges, dandelion-like worms, pink algae and spidery starfish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1899,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[49,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1898"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}