Antarctic marine ecosystems research; Where to from here?

• Main Author: Sayed Z. El-Sayed
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: Department of Oceanography, Texas A & M University, College Station 1998
• Subjects: Antarctic; Southern Ocean; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Antarctica; Memoirs of National Institute of Polar Research; Polar Research
• Online Access: https://nipr.repo.nii.ac.jp/?action=repository_uri&item_id=2322; http://id.nii.ac.jp/1291/00002322/; https://nipr.repo.nii.ac.jp/?action=repository_action_common_download&item_id=2322&item_no=1&attribute_id=18&file_no=1

The initiation of the Biological Investigations Of Marine Antarctic Systems and Stocks (BIOMASS) Program in the late 1970s has provided several important insights into the functioning of the Southern Ocean ecosystems and has helped in creating a climate in which research programs addressing elements of the general and specific objectives of BIOMASS were able to flourish. This has led to an explosion of marine research programs to study phenomena and processes of global significance in which Antarctica and the surrounding seas play a key role. While the BIOMASS Program dealt primarily with practical problems related to the wise management of marine living resources of the Southern Ocean, the program addressed neither environmental issues nor problems related to the biogeochemistry of the Southern Ocean. These were left to the other more focused, process-oriented programs which were developed in response to the worldwide concern over climate change as a result of increased levels of CO_2 and the depletion of the stratospheric ozone over Antarctica. This concern has provided the stimulus behind such programs as the Southern Ocean-Joint Global Flux Study (SO-JGOFS), and the Southern Ocean-Global Ecosystem Dynamics (SO-GLOBEC) which regarded the Southern Ocean as an ideal environment in which to test many of the hypotheses put forward by these programs. A few of the programs that have a focus on Antarctic marine ecosystems and their living resources are discussed, and their contributions to a better understanding of the Antarctic marine ecosystems are evaluated.