OU PhD reveals decline in marine animals due to reduction in sea ice

An OU PhD student, who graduated in September 2018, found that there has been a decline in the number of marine animals in the Antarctic due to a reduction in sea ice.

Dr Terri Souster, who graduated at the OU’s ceremony at Milton Keynes, UK, completed her PhD while working as a marine biologist for the British Antarctic Survey, one of the OU’s Affiliated Research Centres.

She was based on the Western Antarctic Peninsula which is one of the fastest changing parts of the globe and where there is very little baseline data for seafloor biodiversity, so she applied to do a PhD to research what changes would happen as climate changes.

She found that there has been a large decline in marine animals such as sponges and anemones due to increased iceberg scour. The iceberg scours are caused by the icebergs drifting into shallower areas and producing long, narrow furrows. The increased iceberg scour comes from a reduction in sea ice and the retreat of glaciers within Antarctic fjords, both of which would have fixed the immobile marine animals in place.

“Iceberg scour on the sea floor causes the same impact as trawling,” said Dr Souster. “The Antarctic is a natural laboratory as it does not have other factors such as coastal erosion, pollution etc and therefore we can look at the effect of iceberg scour on sea floor communities and infer that to the effect of trawling in other parts of the globe.”

Dr Souster is now doing postdoctoral research for the British Antarctic Survey, looking at the effect of sea ice loss on marine animals in the Antarctic and the Arctic, which ends in March 2019.

Read about the OU’s Affiliated Research Centres

Read more about the British Antarctic Survey

Read more about OU research into the environment