A Canadian naval vessel with scientists from 黄色直播 and other Canadian government and academic institutions has cruised into Antarctic waters, carrying cutting-edge equipment designed and built in Nova Scotia, in an unprecedented mission to conduct climate-change research at the bottom of the earth.
The scientific team aboard HMCS鈥疢argaret Brooke鈥痠s being led by chief scientist Tom James of听听and co-chief scientist Brent Else of the University of Calgary, and includes more than a dozen experts from several Canadian universities and government departments.
It's the first-ever听Canadian-led Antarctic research mission.
Dr. Jennifer Tolman, manager of the听LaRoche Lab听in Dal's听Department of Biology,听and Jeshua Becker, an oceanographic research technician with the听CERC.OCEAN听lab in the听Oceanography Department, are on board and will lead biogeochemistry and environmental DNA (eDNA) sampling and research 鈥� work that is essential to furthering our understanding of the global ocean.
"The polar regions are changing more rapidly than anywhere else on earth, and studies here in Antarctica will be interesting to compare to what is happening in our own Canadian Arctic," Dr. Tolman said shortly after the vessel crossed over the 60th鈥痯arallel in the Drake Passage.
"This unique mission uniting government, military and academia in an expedition to a very distant and challenging environment came together relatively quickly, and serves as a great example of what can happen when the will to collaborate around great science exists. The on-board team is fantastic, and it's a privilege to be working together with the Navy personnel and researchers from all across Canada," she said.
Decoding the ocean's 'little engines'
The vessel reached Admiralty Bay, its first research site in the South Shetland Islands last weekend. Since then, the team has collected water and sediment samples from fast rescue boats as well as from the ship along a "glacier to open ocean transect." Further work is planned in other parts of the South Shetland Islands, as well as studies around Deception Island (the ice-covered, flooded caldera of an active volcano) and the West Antarctic Peninsula, which will also involve crossing the Antarctic Circle.
Dr. Tolman said her work will involve filtering a lot of water, including water collected from the ship using a unique, containerized Conductivity-Temperature-Depth, Launch and Recovery System (CTD-LARS), which was designed and built by Hawboldt Industries in Chester, N.S. She and Becker will also be deploying an eDNA sampler designed and built by Dartmouth Ocean Technologies that filters and preserves eDNA samples.
Initial processing of the water samples occurs in the on-board lab, which is set up within a custom, sea-going 20-foot container, designed and built by CTS Container and Trailer Services in Dartmouth. The samples will then be taken back to 黄色直播 to extract and sequence the eDNA to see what is living in the seawater, how many cells are in the water and what their characteristics are.
"We're interested in microbial communities 鈥� the little engines that drive many key reactions in the ocean鈥�-鈥� but we'll also get information about larger organisms, such as fish and penguins," she said in an email from the HMCS Margaret Brooke, an Arctic Offshore Patrol Vessel that was built by Irving Shipbuilding in Halifax, and which is on its maiden voyage to Antarctica. She added that "we've seen SO many penguins here! They've been swimming around the boat as we sample sometimes!"
They are looking at how the microbial community changes as the ship moves from the glaciers to the open ocean, as well as at the microbial biodiversity around the hydrothermal vents in the Deception Island caldera.
A ship equipped for the job
Becker will be leading the water sampling and sensor profiling using the containerized CTD-LARS. He began working with this shortly after its delivery by Hawboldt in 2022 while he was doing an internship with the Marine Environmental Observation Prediction and Response Network (MEOPAR) at Dal. MEOPAR has been instrumental in supplying equipment, supporting university participation and sharing in the coordination and funding of the science program.
"It is certainly a privilege to be part of a mission like this. I have always looked forward to an opportunity to work in Antarctica and was thrilled when I was asked to help out," he said.
"Beyond making use of technological advancements like the CTD-LARS and the eDNA sampler, this expedition marks a significant milestone as the first Canadian-led Antarctic research mission and the Royal Canadian Navy's first-ever visit to Antarctica."
The mission will showcase the capabilities of the Modular Ocean Research Infrastructure (MORI), developed by MEOPAR with support from Irving Shipbuilding Inc. and designed to allow flexible conversion of non-research vessels to support ocean research.
"What MORI does is it allows quite sophisticated research, that you'd typically only be able to do on a highly customised research vessel, to be done on vessels like the Margaret Brooke that weren't primarily designed for science," said MEOPAR Associate Scientific Director and 黄色直播 Oceanography professor, Doug Wallace.