Science

Videos

 

The Antarctic Site Inventory in Action!
It is with great pleasure that we present some video clips of the Antarctic Site Inventory at work, from our tented campsite on Petermann Island as well as from the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ENDEAVOUR, the “mothership” for our shipboard censusing in the Antarctic Peninsula.

We are blessed to have a wonderful partnership and alliance with LINDBLAD EXPEDITIONS and NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, and OCEANITES and the Antarctic Site Inventory are proud to have been chosen as their Antarctic Conservation Partner. This relationship ensures ongoing data collection during each Antarctic field season and provides NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ENDEAVOUR guests an opportunity to learn about our project directly and to meet Inventory researchers “up close and personally.”

We are dedicated to expanding the cohort of “Antarcticists” concerned with Antarctica’s long-term conservation and, to this end, the cooperative effort and coordination among OCEANITES, LINDBLAD EXPEDITIONS, and NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC helps to showcase “messages” that Antarctica and Antarctic penguins are sending about global warming and the fate of humankind.

Data collected by the Inventory assist the implementation of the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty and, in 13 seasons from November 1994 through February 2007, Inventory researchers have made 784 visits and collected data at 113 Antarctic Peninsula locations. The Inventory’s monitoring and assessment of these sites enables environmental changes to be detected:

Play Video - Cuverville Island

Sometimes, there are special encounters:

Play Video - Lone Emperor Penguin

In addition to our shipboard censusing program, Oceanites and the Antarctic Site Inventory also operate a tented campsite at Petermann Island, assisted by a grant from the US National Science Foundation’s Office Of Polar Programs. In addition to monitoring changes at this heavily visited, environmentally sensitive location, we intend to generate the first-ever comparison, discussion, and analyses of century-long changes at a single Antarctic location.

Petermann Island is where the Antarctic explorer Jean-Baptiste Charcot overwintered in 1909 and where, quite literally, it is warming faster than almost anywhere else on the planet  — an increase of 2.8˚C. (5˚F.) on a year-round basis and 5˚C. (9˚F.) in winter. Adélie penguins are declining dramatically, while gentoo penguins are increasing their numbers and expanding their range.

Play Video - Petermann Island

The work of Oceanites and the Antarctic Site Inventory continues to set a vigorous pace. As one example, in collaboration with Dr. William Fagan’s Conservation Biology, Community Ecology, and Theoretical Ecology Lab at the University of Maryland, Oceanites has begun an effort to utilize hierarchical Bayesian modeling and other, cutting-edge statistical and global information system (GIS) techniques to analyze the 13-year-old Antarctic Site Inventory database in the context of other extant, long-term Peninsula datasets. In the end, we hope to gain a better understand how Peninsula biological and physical processes, as well as direct/cumulative impacts from human activities, may connect.