You can track the Polarstern research vessel in a number of ways as it traverses Antarctic waters. You can view the raw coordinate data here on www.sailwx.info's tracking map. You can also track it in Google Earth by downloading this constantly updated file from the SCAR MarBIN portal. The file in turn accesses position data from this page on the Polar View website, which al...

Boulder, Colorado is home to some of the world's leading polar and climate experts, and so to help celebrate the beginning of the International Polar Year we'll be holding Ice Fest, which may, if successful, become an annual event. This year it will be held March 8-11th on the University of Colorado at Boulder campus, with "Arts & Sciences Day "on Thursday March 8th showcasing phenomenal photograph from both polar regions, a special keynote talk on Friday followed by "An Evening with Michael Brown," an award-winning Boulder filmmaker, "Family Day" on Saturday t...

Cetacean surveys by helicopter turned out to be a particularly efficient technique to identify the poorly known beaked whales and thus extend our knowledge of their geographical distribution in Antarctica. Have you ever heard of “Ziphiids”? This term refers to the cousins of dolphins which belong to the most mysterious family of all cetaceans. This family, also known as beaked whales, is one of the biggest among cetaceans. In the Southern Ocean, their size varies from five meters for the smallest to twice as long for the Arnoux’s Beaked Whale. Despite their enormous size, these 20 species are still very poorly known. Some of them have never been seen alive, and most of the information about their biology has been gained by investigating stranded specimens. Beaked whale...

Everyone knows that the bulk of an iceberg is underwater, so what happens when they hit the sea floor? Icebergs that scrape over the sea floor or get stuck on underwater elevations cause enormous disturbance events. Entire faunal assemblages are wiped out during such events. Scraping icebergs leave behind a diverse landscape, usually marked by “bulldozed” areas as well as ploughed sediments or piles of rock. This new, unoccupied habitat is quickly seized by mobile pioneer species. Often, patchworks of different recolonization stages form and thus enhance species diversity. Initially, scientists assumed that the seafloor fauna of the Larsen A and B area would have been strongly affected by iceberg scouring. When an ice shelf collapses, many smaller icebergs form in a shor...

In partnership with the Japanese National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR), Elsevier will launch "Polar Science", a new international peer-reviewed journal, in 2007. This new quarterly journal is a consolidation of five existing publications: "Polar Bioscience", "Polar Meteorology and Glaciology", "Antarctic Meteorite Research", "Polar Geoscience", and "Advances in Polar Upper Atmosphere Research". Under the Editorship of professor Kazuo Shibuya (NIPR & Department of Polar Science, SOKENDAI, Tokyo), the journal will publish original articles and reviews focused on a wide spectrum of sciences related to the polar regions of the Earth and other planets. For more information about the journal, please go to the ...

European Union International Polar Year - Arctic Research Opportunities at the European Centre for Arctic Environmental Research (Ny-

The Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Center and the Marine Technology Society’s ROV Committee organize an annual International ROV Competition for middle school through university-level students worldwide. In recognition of IPY, the 2007 competition is challenging students to design and build ROVs (“underwater robots”) for science, exploration, and industry operations in polar environments. On this blog you will learn more about the 2007 international event, which is taking place June 22-24 at Memorial University and the Institute for Ocean Technology in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. You will also hear from so...

Under the former Larsen ice shelf east of the Antarctic Peninsula, deep-sea sea cucumbers and stalked feather stars were ubiquitously found in shallow waters. These animals usually inhabit far greater water depths. The main aim of the current Polarstern expedition to Antarctica is the investigation of marine ecosystems under the former Larsen ice shelf. This "white spot" with regard to biodiversity research gave rise to the following questions: What kind of life actually existed under the former floating ice shelf which was up to several hundred meters thick? What are the prospects for the future after the collapse of the ice shelf? Obviously, prosperous life did not exist in the area where the Larsen B ice shelf broke off three years ago. This is surprisin...

You can track the Polarstern research vessel in a number of ways as it traverses Antarctic waters. You can view the raw coordinate data here on www.sailwx.info's tracking map. You can also track it in Google Earth by downloading this constantly updated file from the SCAR MarBIN portal. The file in turn accesses position data from this page on the Polar View website, which al...

Because they are so many birds and so few observers around Antarctica, every observation matters. The recently launched marine biodiversity internet portal SCAR-MarBIN allows birdwatchers to directly upload their data, making them available to scientists as well as the general public. As top predators, birds are an important component of the Southern Ocean‘s ecosystem. They are part of the comprehensive effort of the Census of Antarctic Marine Life (CAML) to study the distribution and abundance of the Antarctic biodiversity. CAML is now using the SCAR MarBIN portal, developed at the Royal Belgian Institute for Natural Sciences by Claude De Broyer and Bruno Danis, to concentrate biogeographical data on bi...