Researchers from CIM have already begun their return after a month on Deception Island. Bad weather is delaying the journey, but they hope to reach Spain this Monday, the 19th
The return home for the researchers from the Marine Research Center of the University of Vigo (CIM), who are part of the XXXVII Antarctic Campaign, is proving to be a bit more complicated than expected due to the weather conditions. The boat journey, normally lasting a day, which connects Deception Island and King George Island, will be three days this time. Rough seas are making navigation difficult for the oceanographic vessel Hespérides, aboard which scientists Mariano Lastra, Jesús Troncoso, and Jesús López are traveling.
After a month in Antarctica, where cold, ice, and rough seas complicated their work, the researchers have already begun their return to Vigo. They left Gabriel de Castilla Army Base this past Wednesday, the 14th, and expect to arrive at King George Island today, Friday. If weather conditions permit, they will catch a plane that will take them on a 2-3 hour journey to Punta Arenas. From there, they will have to fly to Santiago de Chile and then catch another flight to Madrid, where they are expected to arrive next Monday, February 19th. It’s a complicated and exhausting journey, but one that is well worth it when they remember the good times spent in the last month. As Mariano Lastra explains, “the camaraderie at the base was very good, and the army personnel go out of their way to facilitate our work and ensure we have all possible comforts. The rest of the colleagues from other scientific projects were also very good company because there, we all support and care for each other to ensure all projects move forward. Collaboration in Antarctica is not an option, it’s an obligation”.
The CIM scientific team arrived at the Spanish base on January 13th to carry out the second working campaign within the framework of the Radiant project (the first was in 2023), one of thirty projects comprising the XXXVII Antarctic Campaign coordinated by the Army. Their objective was to assess the effect of solar radiation and temperature on the degradation of macroalgal biomass in sedimentary intertidal zones in Porto Foster, on Deception Island.
Objectives achieved
The researchers are satisfied with the work done during this time. “We were very lucky with the weather. We didn’t see much sun, but the conditions were good enough to finish all the field samples and experiments planned. However, there were problems to solve”, as Mariano Lastra highlights. “Thanks to the support of the Army personnel managing the base, we were able to solve the problems that arose on the fly. Some days we had bad weather and had no choice but to stay inside the base, without going out into the field, and other days, the sea conditions were poor and the Zodiac couldn’t be launched”, Lastra recalls.
But the researchers were proactive, thanks to their experience in eight previous campaigns in Antarctica, and they took these possibilities into account in their planning. “We had enough time so that if something went wrong, we could try again. That’s something we’ve learned throughout the campaigns. In Antarctica, when you calculate the time for a task or an experiment, you have to multiply it by two, just in case”, acknowledges Mariano Lastra.
Now, they have a year of work ahead of them (the Radiant project has a total duration of three years) to process the samples and perform numerical data treatment. Depending on the results they obtain, they will consider applying for another project and continue working in Antarctica. In the short term, the researchers will try to present the first results of last year’s campaign at the X Symposium on Polar Studies to be held in Salamanca in May.
Radiant Project
The Radiant project focuses on macroalgal deposits from rocky substrates deposited on the coastline by currents and tides, which act as generators of numerous ecological processes associated with their decomposition, including consumption, habitat supply, and sediment biogeochemical activity. The objective of the CIM team, which also includes scientist Iván Franco from the University of Cádiz, is to quantify these processes on ten beaches along the coastline of Porto Foster and their effect on nutrient release and CO2 emission through the sediment, as an estimator of substrate metabolic activity.
In last year’s campaign, a first round of tests was conducted, in addition to studying the effects of increased UV radiation and temperature related to climate warming on the main biogeochemical variables associated with subsidies of macroalgae deposited on the coast. During the just-concluded campaign, in addition to replicating these samples, they carried out two other experiments, one manipulating the natural environment and the other under mesocosm conditions in the laboratory. In the first, selective UVA/B radiation filters were used to assess the hypothesis that increased incident UV radiation due to the ozone hole opening causes alterations in the decomposition processes of macroalgal biomass accumulated in the sedimentary intertidal zones of Porto Foster. The mesocosm experiment, on the other hand, allowed them to study the effects of UVR alteration on primary consumers, analyzing the consumption rate of the herbivorous amphipod Gondogeneia antarctica on fragments of two species of Antarctic macroalgae that were previously irradiated with excess UVA and UVB.
Source: DUVI
