Aboard the ship Hespérides, the expedition departed from the Argentine port of Ushuaia.
The technicians of the Marine Research Center (CIM) Antonio Fuentes Lema and Paulo Alcaraz Rocha, and the teacher and researcher of the Department of Ecology and Animal Biology Cristina Sobrino García, are UVigo staff who, together with scientists from the CSIC, are participating in the Antom-II expedition, with the aim of analyzing the impact of human-origin pollutants in Antarctica. The researchers from UVigo, IDEAE-CSIC, ICM-CSIC and IQOG-CSIC departed in the last hours from the Argentine port of Ushuaia, aboard the oceanographic research vessel Hespérides, from where they will take water and air samples in the Southern Ocean to analyze anthropogenic pollution. The results of the study, which was carried out last year for the first time, will help to understand the effects of these chemical pollutants on Antarctic ecosystems.
“The Antom project aims to study the effect of emerging pollutants and anthropogenic semi-volatile organic compounds on the environment and marine organisms, and among the latter, the project focuses on the effect on microscopic organisms, namely phytoplankton and bacterioplankton”, points out Sobrino, who explains that UVigo researchers are responsible for studying these compounds of human origin on the abundance, composition and metabolism of phytoplankton. “These results are highly important since phytoplankton, despite its small size, constitutes the base of the marine food chain and is an active part of the global carbon cycle, capturing atmospheric CO2 and thus contributing to the regulation of the planet’s climate”, details the UVigo researcher.
The expedition will sail aboard the Hespérides to the Bellinghausen Sea in Antarctica, where, for a month, the research staff will work to find out “what effects human-origin organic matter has on the microbial communities of Antarctica and evaluate the capacity of bacteria to degrade these pollutants,” says the project coordinator and IDAEA-CSIC researcher, Jordi Dachs. Antom-II continues the study that began in December 2020 from the port of Vigo, in which air and water samples were collected in the Atlantic Ocean to determine how chemical pollutants were transported to the Southern Ocean.
Assessments of the first expedition
One year after the first expedition, the UVigo researcher points out that it is still too early to talk about definitive results from Antom-I. However, she adds that “the preliminary analysis we were able to do of the campaign results shows that we obtained very good data with which to work and obtain relevant conclusions about the interaction between marine phytoplankton and emerging pollutants, but we still have to share the results with the rest of the participants in order to obtain a global and therefore more complete vision”.
For Cristina Sobrino, the assessment of the first campaign is, therefore, “very good in terms of results and excellent from the point of view of UVigo’s participation. I know that Antonio and Paulo worked hard and developed a very important and proactive role within the group”, confirms the researcher, who considers that working in Antarctica is always a challenge due to the rapidly changing weather conditions, to which is added that biological activity at this time of year is very intense, “so it is very likely that each season is a different world with new technical and scientific situations to face”, she explains.
The research activity of the Biological Oceanography Group and specifically the development of this campaign had the support of the Xunta de Galicia and the European Union, through the co-financing of the CIM within the framework of the FEDER Galicia 2014-2020 Operational Program.
Source: DUVI
