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Antarctica
Issue 19
Gateway Antarctica: Centre for Antarctic Studies and Research
June 2004
Antarctic fish: Can they take the heat?
Recent research in the School of Biological Sciences suggests some Antarctic fish could adapt to a gradual warming of their environment.
“Everybody in the scientific community
is of the assumption that these animals
will live quite happily at –2 °C, and that
they will die at plus five.”
Doctoral student Cara Lowe and her
supervisor Associate Professor Bill
Davison, have been studying the impact
of water temperature on a species of
Antarctic fish, Pagothenia borchgrevinki.
Dr Davison said he had always had “a
sneaking suspicion” that this assumption “wasn’t quite right”.
Antarctic fish are considered
“extreme” animals as they live at a constant temperature of almost minus two
degrees Celsius, Dr Davison said.
“Scientific dogma at the moment has
these animals as what are called extreme stenotherms, which means that
there’s been a trade off.” The fish could
survive in very cold water, but were
now specialised particularly for those
conditions.
The experiments, conducted at Scott
Base, tested what happened to the fish
when they were acclimated to warmer
temperatures. “The scientific literature
told us that you can’t do it, and I didn’t
quite believe it, so we tried it, and we
got results that no way did we expect.”
Cara said the fish were kept at plus
4°C for four weeks, and were then
assessed on their swimming performance. “We’ve got a swimming flume,
essentially a fishy treadmill , so you can
Directors Note
The Day after Tomorrow
We can thank Hollywood for drawing the world’s attention to the importance of our science and in particular the ocean conveyor belt that controls the transfer
of heat in the Worlds Oceans. Although we disagree
strongly with the timing and severity of the changes
proposed in the popular movie, the ice core record
from the East Antarctic ice sheet quite clearly shows
that global mean temperatures have changed dramatically over short periods of
time in the past 400,000 years. We also know that Antarctica is an important
driver of global climate systems but we are unsure, due to complex feedback
mechanisms, how Antarctica will respond to global change, and what effect small
changes in ocean temperatures may have on the annual sea ice cycle that produces
the cold dense salty water that feeds into the ocean conveyor belt, and what effect these changes may have on the Earth system as a whole.
There have never been better reasons to undertake scientific research in Antarctica. The New Zealand Government has pledged in a revised Statement of Strategic Interest to support high quality Antarctic and Southern Ocean science, that
benefits from the unique research opportunities provided by Antarctica. The
Foundation (FoRST) is introducing a new Target Outcome specifically for Antarctic research within the Natural Ecosystem Portfolio that is up for re-investment in
September this year.
These are excellent opportunities for collaborative
multidisciplinary research that Gateway Antarctica is
keen to develop.
--Prof. Bryan Storey
Doctoral student Cara Lowe in Antarctica
where she studied the swimming performance
of fish in warmer water. Photo: Bill Davison
set the flow rates and assess their performance. We heat the water to different temperatures inside the swimming
flume.”
The experiments showed that fish
acclimated to 4°C “could swim better
at higher temperatures, and fish that
had just been acclimated to their normal environment couldn’t”.
Dr Davison said the experiments
showed that “they’ll swim quite happily
in water up to eight degrees, maybe 10
degrees. They do some rather marvelous things.”
The next stage of research will look at
exactly how the fish are adapting to the
change in temperature. Cara said it
would be interesting to try acclimating
fish to six degrees or more, to “see
how far you can take them”.
The impact of global warming on Antarctica was one reason for undertaking
the research, Dr Davison said. “It’s
very prevalent on the Antarctic Peninsula -- that part of Antarctica has had
the greatest temperature change of
… continued pg 2.
…in B r ief
Nanette Schleich was awarded a
prize for her poster on “Transmission
of Natural Light through Snow in Antarctica” at the Antarctica New Zealand
Annual Conference at the University of
Waikato. Cara Lowe was given top
student presentation at the same conference for her presentation on “Can
Antarctic Fish Take the Heat? WarmAcclimation of Sustained Swimming
Performance in an Antarctic Notothenioid Fish” (see main article).
Esme Robinson, MSc Student in Biological Sciences was awarded the Kelly
Tarlton Antarctic Scholarship for 2004
by Antarctica New Zealand. Esme’s
thesis is titled “Antarctic Fish: Cold
Water Specialists or Adaptable Generalists?”. As part of her scholarship she
will work in Antarctica in the 2004/05
season. Esme also works part time for
the Canterbury Museum as an Education Communicator, often teaching
school groups about Antarctic heroes
and wildlife.
Michelle Finnemore has been appointed Chair of the Antarctic Link
Canterbury (ALC) group. She took up
the appointment as of 1 May 2004.
The inaugural New Zealand Yearbook of International Law was recently published and includes a significant section dedicated to Antarctica
and the Southern Ocean. Michelle Finnemore is on the Editorial Board for
this publication, produced by the International Law Group from the School of
Law at the University of Canterbury,
Alex Conte is Chair of the Group and
General Editor.
Imaging New Zealand/Aotearoa
Conference, London, 3 July 2004
Gateway Antarctica scholars take on
New Zealand’s unique cultural links
with Antarctica at the New Zealand
Studies Association annual conference
in London. Klaus Dodds, Leslie Roberts, and Kathryn Yusoff, representing
three different but complimentary research efforts by GA, are among 15
international scholars who will present
at New Zealand House. Klaus is a former Erskine Fellow to GA, Kathryn an
alumna of the GCAS Course and Leslie
a recent Fulbright Fellow at GA.
Director:
Mid-year Enrolments are now open for ANTA 103: Life in the Cold.
Phone 364-2136 for details or 0800 VARSITY.
GA is currently accepting applications for the Graduate Certificate in Antarctic Studies course. Deadline 1 August 2004. Download an application form
from: http://www.anta.canterbury.ac.nz/courses/gcas
New Email address for Gateway: [email protected]
Publications: Over the last year GA’s postdoctoral fellow Dr. Luke Copland
has been involved in the publication of a series of scientific papers:
1) “Global Land-Ice Measurements from Space (GLIMS): remote sensing and GIS investigations of the Earth’s cryosphere”. Geocarto International,
19(2), p. 57
2) “The distribution and flow characteristics of
surge-type glaciers in the Canadian High Arctic”.
Annals of Glaciology, 36, p. 73
3) “The distribution of basal motion beneath a High
Arctic polythermal glacier”. Journal of Glaciology, 49, p.407
4) “Links between short-term velocity variations and
the subglacial hydrology of a predominantly cold
poly-thermal glacier”. Journal of Glaciology, 49, p. 337
www.geocarto.com
Antarctic Fish: Can they take the heat?
...continued from pg 1.
anywhere on
the planet.” Global change was affecting Antarctica, so “if you’ve got animals that are such extreme specialists
that they live at minus two but they
won’t live anywhere else, what’s going to happen even if you get a small
shift in temperature?” Dr Davison
Pagothenia borchgrevinki. Photo: Bill Davison
said the research they had completed
last season showed “that the fish, at
least, seem inherently capable of being able to adapt to elevated temperatures”.
It was impossible to say what would happen in the long term, he said. “The fact
that we can keep these fish for a month at four degrees tells me nothing about
how they might survive in the long term.” There had been little research conducted on other Antarctic animals in this field, Dr Davison said, “and the bottom
line is, every animal is different.”
Ian Henderson (UC Chronicle) - abridged.
United Nations Environment Programme
Dr Wendy Lawson met with Dr’s
Gino Casassa and Andres Rivera at the
University of Bristol, England, at the
end of April. The meeting resulted in
the completion of a project development proposal which will be presented
to the GEF Funding Council, entitled
“Targeted research on climate change
impacts on southern mid-latitude ice
fields”. The project is a collaboration
GIS Technician: Paul Barr
Susannah Hawtin
Title Image © 2004 John Henzell
between the Centre for Scientific
Studies (CECS) Chile and Gateway
Antarctica. If funded, the project will
be further developed and will result in
a full proposal to address identified
deficiencies in glacier monitoring and
enhance the capacity for planning and
managing responses to the impacts of
ice-mass loss.
Gateway Antarctica
Prof. Bryan Storey
Centre Manager: Michelle Finnemore
Administrator:
WHAT’S NEW AT GA
Centre for Antarctic Studies and Research
University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800,
Christchurch, New Zealand
Phone: +64 3 364-2136
Email: [email protected]