Antarctica

Follow a group of NIWA scientists investigating various aspects of plankton which are the base of the Antarctic oceans food web.

NIWA researchers are using remote underwater cameras to uncover the rich diversity of life under the Ross Sea and they are amazed at what they are finding in these chilly Antarctic waters.

Climate Present and Past is a core-funded project under NIWA's National Climate Centre. It aims to explore historical climate data and track past changes in climate through a range of approaches.

In 2016, NIWA technician Rod Budd is doing a routine dive under the Antarctic ice at Cape Evans, studying the creatures that live there.

Earlier this month, NIWA welcomed the Auckland University of Technology ‘Squid Squad’ – a team of scientists from the Lab for Cephalopod Ecology and Systematics – to unbox and categorise cephalopod species taken from voyages around the country.

In 2023, RV Tangaroa undertook a 45-day voyage to the Southern Ocean and Ross Sea (TAN2301) between January 11 and February 24, 2023.

Scientists from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) have returned from a six-week voyage to Antarctica.

We are happily heading back from a highly successful trip to the frozen continent knowing that the data from this voyage will contribute to a broad body of science critically important to understanding the Ross Sea ecosystem and the impacts of climate change.

One of our main tasks for this voyage is to better understand the geographic distribution - biogeography - of Antarctic organisms in the western Ross Sea, from the frozen coast out onto the continental shelf at 500m deep.

We have now visited 23 separate sites in these coastal areas, albeit some of them very close together. Every time we visit a new site, we first need to map the seafloor as we are working in unchartered coastal waters.

We are now halfway through our Antarctic mission and the past two and a half weeks have been marked by feelings of excitement, anticipation, and trepidation.

We are two weeks into the voyage and while we have yet to enter the Ross Sea we have already seen so much! We are onboard RV Tangaroa with a team of 20 scientists and 18 crew, including a ship doctor and ice pilot, heading for the Ross Sea to study ocean physics, food web dynamics, subseafloor fluid systems and benthic ecology.