Svalbard. Life in the Arctic seas in winter is as unexplored as a white spot on the map. New Technology is on an expedition to collect samples around the clock. Winters without ice opens to investigate the unknown, before it’s too late.
The researcher Sünnje Basedow stands ready at her laser optical plankton counter (LOPC), which is soon to be lowered into the sea. She will survey some of the ecosystem’s most important organisms: copepods, Calanus in Latin. They are microscopically small, but vital staple food for other marine animals, fish and whales.
The darkness of Kongsfjorden is compact. Beyond the vessel RV Helmer Hanssen’s headlights, it is just black. The time after midnight when the crew members in yellow overalls and yellow helmets, locks the instrument in a wire before it is winched down, gently but firmly, to 300 meters depth.
New technology is having on board when researchers and students for the second year doing the expedition Polar Night to collect and analyze samples in the waters around Svalbard. With various technical means seeking the answers to basic facts about the marine life in the winter.
The four dark months, one third of the Arctic years, we know nothing really about.
– There is a perception that fish and plankton goes into a kind of stupor. But we have seen that much of what happens in the winter of great importance for the growth period in the summer, says Stig Falk-Petersen, expedition leader and professor at the Arctic University of Tromso.
Samtidigt is the quest for oil, gas and other natural resources in the Arctic intense. Even ship traffic increases, and besides tourism, when the ice melts due to the warmer climate, and the polar regions will become more accessible.
An exploit in different industries tend to assure that all activities in the Arctic should be done with the highest standards of environmental stewardship. But not even they know anything about the ecosystem in the winter.
Plankton Counter LOPC is lowered along the side of the ship. When the water flows out through a gap which is seven times seven centimeters.
Small animals, between 200 and 3000 micron size, count when passing a laser beam directed at a mirror, which in turn sends back the light to a photodiode. An underwater PC records the number twice per second, all the way down to the bottom.
With the instrument becomes the bills much faster and more accurate, tells Sünnje Basedow.
While sitting Soren Häfker, graduate student from the German Alfred Wegener Institute, in the laboratory on the lower deck, bent over a microscope. His issue is with copepods orientation to do.
During the summer they follow a circadian rhythm. They rise to the surface at night to eat the phytoplankton. On the day they hide in the depths of not being eaten themselves. Other copepod species, not found in the Arctic, makes the same day movements in the winter. Then they are guided not by light but by a genetic clock. The question is whether the same is true arctic species.
To answer performs Soren Häfker 24-hour experiment to collect copepods different times of the day and then make gene analyzes of them at home in Germany.
Every four hours lowered a fine-mesh landing net to the bottom, where copepods winters, and pulled up in the open position to 200 meters depth. There shut net and pulled up with its content of animal from the bottom – 300 meters – 200 meters depth.
There goes a bit si and so. Several times caught too few copepods and time consuming håvdraget must be repeated.
Somewhat more advanced is a multihåv with five different networks that can unfolded at different depths. A motor with pressure sensors programmed to release the ocean after landing net, as the instrument is winched up from the bottom.
Malin Daase, at the University of Tromso, using multi seas to identify at what depths the four-five different copepod species are present during winter. She programming the engine so that the first line goes from the bottom of the depth of 300 meters to 200 meters and the last from 20 meters to the surface.
– I’m also looking for active males during the dark time, she says.
This is another example of basic knowledge is lacking about the Arctic winter.
Many of the approximately fifteen scientists aboard currently studying the copepod, as there are a handful of different species in the Arctic. Its critical role in the food web because they can transform their food with low energy content, fat with high energy content. And they come in massive quantities and is therefore the most important food for fish and baleen whales in the Arctic.
– why it’s important to know the mechanism to wander up and down even exist at these. Otherwise we can not know if they are affected by the warmer climate, explains Sören Häfker and looking forward among their samples.
Other researchers on board examine diatoms in the sediments or cod eating habits.
The different instruments flown in and out of the water 24 hours a day. The rent for the ship is 180 000 per day, so the time onboard is too precious to be slept away. And really it does not matter when you sleep because it is as dark in the daytime as at night.
Marine Biological expeditions to the Polar Night, taking samples this far north in winter, has not been possible to do until now. A crucial factor is the development of technology.
– We have buoys under the ice that measure important parameters throughout the year when we are not here. Once a year we drain them on the data we need, for example, currents, salinity, water temperature, particulate matter and chlorophyll, says Professor Paul Renaud is expedition coordinator. But the warmer climate is also a reason for winter expeditions going to do.
– Just ten years ago, these fjords covered of ice this time of year.
There is also a problem that conditions change, because researchers want to investigate a so unaffected ecosystems possible.
– It’s like shooting at a moving target, says Paul Renaud.
Under the four days at sea we move on open water. Only on a few occasions thuds chunks of ice against the ship’s bow. But they do not come from seawater that has frozen, but from a glacier, Kongsbreen, which flows into the fjord.
The weather is quite quiet, and the temperature is pleasant minus seven to eight degrees. But when the wind picks up, the literally ice cold. When the gloves come off to be able to photograph, I feel your fingers soon as lollies.
Every day, at noon, I go up on tires for understanding how dark it is. Day dark is as black as pitch darkness. The only difference is a muted glow subscribing behind the mountain crests that plunges steeply into Kongsfjorden. The absence of light can not imagine, it must be experienced.
Just after two years of investigation, it is clear that the activity of the animals in sea does not turn off when the light disappears. I see several marine insects that carry the eggs, indicating that reproduction is in full swing even in winter.
– The whole idea of project is to understand all seasons, says Stig Falk-Petersen, who is also one of the initiators of the “Polar Night” project.
– Average temperatures in the Arctic have risen by two degrees since 1987, that is significantly more than the global increase (which is 0.8 ° C, editor’s note), says Stig Falk- Petersen.
To understand the impact of the climate of the Arctic ecosystem is the need for measurements big.
Scientists have barely time for his mission.
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