The Antarctic Sun: News about Antarctica - Current Science Headlines

Science—The Biological World

Research assistant Marty Hynes works on getting FATTI ready for deployment down a hole through the sea ice into McMurdo Sound.

Predator and Prey

There are few places left in the world where the big predators still naturally dominate their ecosystem. Except perhaps one: The Ross Sea is still relatively pristine. Its intact marine food web offers ecologists an opportunity to challenge scientific orthodoxy about ecosystem structure.

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Type C Personality
If Captain Ahab of Moby Dick literary fame had been a scientist, it might have been an orca and not a sperm whale that drove him to madness. Not because of some antagonistic relationship, but because killer whales have proven to be a tricky animal to study.

Return to Boom Times?
The Adélie penguin boomtown known as Cape Royds went bust in the 2000s. Now there are signs that a recovery is under way. The volcanic rocky headland on Ross Island has always been a sleepy place compared to the other Adélie penguin colonies in the region. It represents the farthest south Adélies have dared to set up breeding grounds.

Containing Contamination
Time is ever so slowly eating away at the bad habits of the past. A decade-long environmental monitoring program at McMurdo Station is showing that contamination around the facility and the nearby marine ecosystem is holding steady or slightly decreasing.

Spreading Out
Scientists from the United States and New Zealand, using a mix of old and new technology, found that the population size of an Adélie penguin colony on Antarctica's Beaufort Island near the southern Ross Sea increased 84 percent over a 50-year period as the ice fields retreated.

Predator and Prey

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