Australian Research Ship on Antarctic Cleanup Duty and Penguin Watch
16.10.2006 - Other
The Australian Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Senator Ian Campbell, said, on 12 October, that two of the more significant projects for the research vessel Aurora Australis this year, would be remediation of contaminated sites and technologically advanced monitoring of penguins foraging for krill, including assessing what impact future harvesting of the tiny crustacean might have on penguins.
Senator Campbell said that this year researchers would assess the effectiveness of a permeable reactive barrier installed last summer to help trap diesel spilt at Casey in 1999 that continues to leach into a nearby melt lake and, eventually, the ocean during the ice melt in summer. "We will also be measuring fuel concentrations in some of the soil that was removed, and sorted in containers, during the installation of the barrier", said Campbell.
Recently, the Australian Government Antarctic Division (AGAD) has developed an automated camera, powered by solar panels, to monitor aspects of Adelie chick survival and breeding chronology. "This year, we will install six cameras at new island sites in the Mawson region ... (and) extra monitoring from the cameras will give us substantial boost towards a broader understanding of the needs of the penguins in this study," said AGAD's Dr Matt Low. One major aim of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) is to ensure that the human harvest of krill does not adversely affect any element of the Southern Ocean Antarctic marine ecosystem.
