[music playing]
You just need to look around you and realise that it's such a unique place.
And it's hugely productive, yet it is still vulnerable.
I don't see that we quite learned from our mistakes previously
and so I think it's about time we did really.
The Antarctic is just such an incredibly biodiverse and unique region and it supports,
particularly in the summer, so many different species.
So what our research is hoping to show is the estimates of species richness in these different
regions and it really should feed into the sort of larger research program within the Southern Oceans
and throughout the whole region. And we'll be able to use those data in future as a baseline for
future monitoring. So we can look at for instance, whether there are shifts in species distributions
and whether we might be finding either unique, rare, cryptic species or invasive species. And
all of this research is really necessary because we need to be able to understand what lives here,
how those species might be changing in relation to human activities and climate change for instance.
We all know that really we need to have this really well managed
network of protected areas throughout the global ocean so that we can conserve biodiversity.
eDNA stands for environmental DNA. As an animal passes through this area where we're sampling,
it leaves behind its' shed skin, mucous, poo, whatever it is that it's left from
its' body and we will hopefully collect it on a filter and get an estimate of species richness
in this particular area. This technique allows you to detect species that you would otherwise
won't be able to observe since they are sneaky or too small to be observed from a boat, something
like that. We can sample in half an hour and do an inventory of the entire surroundings. It's
an emerging technology so it's great that we can help develop that method and also really feed some
quite critical data into our, you know, the larger research program that is ongoing in Antarctica.
We were lucky enough to sight a humpback whale. The humpback whale was logging at the surface
so resting and then at one point it fluked up and we were able to collect some photo ID shots
of that whale, just of the fluke, which will be a really good way of individually identifying it as
within all the whales that are in this area. There are catalogues of humpback whales
around Antarctica and what we will do is pass our photograph of our whale onto other people working
in the area, so that they can try and identify where that whale was seen before or maybe it might
be seen in the future and that'll all be because we managed to collect a really good photo ID shot.
[violin music playing]
[whale spouting noise] I've never seen whales
um, this close by. I've never seen this many whales in my whole life and I think it's just
really touching to hear the way [whale spouting noise], just hear it breathe.
But at the same time it's quite a sad thought when you realise that these areas are not protected.
What is done in other parts of the world, can be seen here, when it comes to pollution, different
chemicals. We have had already for some years been taking samples with microfiber, so microplastics
even like the PFA's, it's the chemical compounds that are used in waterproofing for example outdoor
gear. And that's something that we have also found in this pristine environment.
You would think that this area is pristine and you would think that in a such a small volume
of sea water like two and a half litres, you know it should be clean yet previous work by
Greenpeace has shown that there are microfibers within these waters and all of that is to do with
human activities from really far away places, yet it's still impacting in areas here.
Looking at how the oceans have changed over the last sort of 25 years,
it is quite a sorry state of affairs that we're still trying to manage the ocean sustainably
and we still really haven't put biodiversity conservation first in that list of priorities.
Actually as humans we need to have healthy functioning oceans for food security,
for climate change mitigation, for our well-being.
It's time we put conservation first, it seems obvious to me.