With the help of an underwater drone and the analysis of the hull of ships, a team of researchers seeks to early detect any organism that could disturb the fragile biodiversity of this territory.
In 2020, a group of scientists made a complex discovery on the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula: the presence of mussels (Mytilus cf. platensis), a species that does not exist on the white continent, encouraged them to study the appearance of invasive organisms that can affect this ecosystem.
The increase in temperatures in the Southern Ocean due to the effects of climate change and the increase in post-pandemic maritime traffic are variables that would facilitate the arrival of foreign marine species, disturbing the fragile polar ecosystem. For this reason, researchers from the Center for Dynamic Research of High Latitude Marine Ecosystems (IDEAL) of the Austral University of Chile (UACh) are working on the record of species present in the Antarctic Peninsula, both native and invasive, in order to analyze changes the environment has undergone in recent times.
In this second year of monitoring, and within the Antarctic Scientific Expedition 59 (ECA), they are taking measurements of environmental DNA to generate a taxonomic record of the organisms present in the water. In addition, an agreement between Consorcio Ciencia2030 and the company Patagonia ROV will allow the probe of the southern seabed thanks to the use of an underwater drone. The instrument, which has eight motors, a built-in camera and can reach a depth of 100 meters, will allow extracting oceanographic data such as chlorophyll, salinity, temperature, pH, among other parameters, inside Fildes Bay.
“We will carry out a survey of the information on biodiversity that we find through the images and we will compare that data with the genetic data to have another approximation of what is happening on the seabed”, said Dr. Leyla Cárdenas, a researcher at the IDEAL Center and dean of the Faculty of Sciences of the UACh, who leads this work.
“We seek to complement the work carried out by scientific divers, accessing deeper places that would be dangerous for humans”, said Camila Miranda, Patagonia ROV research assistant, who has the challenge of operating this instrument on the white continent, with a temperature that oscillates between 0°C and 2°C during the summer season.
To this is added the first monitoring of biofouling in Antarctica, organisms that adhere to the hulls of ships and reach new ecosystems, with the risk of colonizing them. On this occasion, two ships that serve in ECA59 were analyzed during November and January in Puerto Montt and Punta Arenas respectively. That work was in charge of Dr. Zambra López, postdoctoral researcher at the IDEAL Center.
During February, the ships will be checked in Antarctica with the help of the underwater drone, extracting DNA samples to detect changes between their journey from Patagonia to Fildes Bay and looking for possible invading microorganisms.
Regarding this work, Dr. Cárdenas emphasizes the need to monitor Antarctic waters. “When we found specimens of mussels in 2020, there was a transit of approximately 70,000 tourists, which stopped after the pandemic. In recent months, maritime activity has resumed and is returning to the rhythm of before. This increases the concern and the urgency of collecting information”, she concluded.