In early July the RRS Sir David Attenborough set sail from Edinburgh to the North Sea to conduct sea trials ahead of its maiden science cruise in Nov-Dec: BIOPOLE Southern Ocean Cruise 1 which will be led by Andrew Meijers! Hugh Venables (BAS) is part of the trials team for its duration (until mid-August), providing expertise on the CTDs and autonomous platforms (including gliders). Nadine Johnston (BAS) also joined for the first few days of the trials, taking the opportunity to step through some net deployment logistics (to collect zooplankton), including deployment of the mammoth net (which will be trialed through the ship’s ‘moonpool’).
These few days included the first ever media trip at sea to show journalists the science capability of the ship, to highlight the science it will do this season for BIOPOLE, as well as a trial of a new Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO). The ships officers and crew (and media) also came along to a presentation on BIOPOLE. Fortuitously, the officers and crew on board, ‘The Giants’ (named after an Antarctic dog sledging team), together with Captain Matthew Neill, will also be supporting our Nov-Dec cruise, so it was a fantastic opportunity to familiarize them with our programme and its goals. If the HVO trials are successful, there is a high possibility that our science cruise will be powered by HVO – but the decision is yet to be made – fingers crossed!
Coverage by the media (including BIOPOLE) include articles in Carbon Brief, The Times and New Scientist (these are both behind a paywall), and Shipping Technology Magazine. There is also a New Scientist video on You Tube. Many thanks to everyone involved, great to see the BIOPOLE flag flying!
Since 1999, the Alfred-Wegener Institute (AWI), has conducted long-term ecological research in the Fram Strait, the passage between East Greenland and Svalbard. In June, Katrin Linse and I joined for this year’s ‘HAUSGARTEN’ expedition on board the research vessel and icebreaker, Polarstern.
This was a fantastic opportunity to collect data with BIOPOLE project partners from AWI (Barbara Niehoff and Sinhué Torres-Valdes) and the Senckenberg Institute (Saskia Brix) which would span the breadth of BIOPOLE’s aims: to understand how nutrients and ecosystems in polar environments influence global primary productivity and carbon cycling from the surface to the seafloor.
With spectacular sea ice and blue skies, the BIOPOLE team worked seamlessly under the midnight sun to sample over 30 stations in just as many days. Katrin and Saskia used an epibenthic sled for the first time in the region to sample the sea-floor animal community; Sinhué and I used an auto-analyser to infer the inorganic and organic nutrient profile of hundreds of water samples; and under the guidance of Barbara, plankton nets were deployed to collect our favourite Arctic zooplankton – copepods. Furthermore, a BIOPOLE-funded Remote Access Sampler (RAS) was deployed as part of a mooring array in the outflowing East Greenland Current, complementing others deployed in the inflowing West Spitsbergen Current.
The data collected will contribute to BIOPOLE work packages 2 and 3. Analysing the nutrient make-up of water flowing out of the Arctic is fundamental to the aims of WP3, and the strategic placement of the HAUSGARTEN stations and RAS will help provide high resolution spatial and temporal coverage within this key Atlantic gateway area. A key aim of WP2 is to refine our understanding of the lipid pump, a process driven primarily by the seasonal vertical migration of polar Calanus copepods. One understudied aspect of this process is the interaction between Calanus and the benthic community. The epi-benthic sled allows for simultaneous sampling of these two communities and subsequent elemental and lipid analysis will offer new insights into bentho-pelagic connections.
Data aside, an important outcome from this expedition was the close interaction and teamwork between BIOPOLE members and partners which is set to continue through future cruises, data sharing and meetings. As an early career researcher, I’m incredibly grateful to the whole BIOPOLE and AWI/Hausgarten team for sharing their knowledge, skills and experience in many ways; from training me in chemical oceanography and mud-sieving, to helping with species identification and general navigation of working at sea. It was an incredibly enriching experience.
The whole BIOPOLE team would like to express our sincere thanks to the Captain Thomas Wunderlich, PSO Thomas Soltwedel, and all scientists and crew for their wonderful support, hospitality and atmosphere on board. For more highlights (including polar bear encounters), read more on the Polarstern blog here.
Copepods were sampled, identified and imaged from the surface to over 5000m deep. Credit: Jen Freer
The BIOPOLE mentoring scheme is ready to launch and aims to support BIOPOLE’s Early Career Researchers (ECRs) with their academic progression and/or professional development.
Academics who have been mentored are more likely to be promoted, demonstrate increased self-efficacy in teaching and research and obtain more grant income (Shellock et al. 2023). Mentoring was also highlighted as a key strategy for retaining women ECRs in academia and forging a path for women to take up leadership positions (Shellock et al. 2023). It has also been highlighted that the COVID-19 pandemic has curtailed opportunities for ECRs and mentoring is one way to expand skills and networks that were more challenging to develop throughout the pandemic (Fisher et al. 2021). This was part of the motivation for starting the BIOPOLE mentoring scheme as well as to provide an opportunity for ECRs to engage with mentors outside of their home institution and subject-specific networks to experience different perspectives on their career development and trajectories.
The BIOPOLE mentoring scheme is open to all BIOPOLE’s ECRs (self-defining) and will be coordinated by the BIOPOLE ECR network and the Executive Board. We are very keen to engage BIOPOLE stakeholders in the mentoring scheme, both to act as mentors or for stakeholders ECRs to engage as a mentee. We are also in the process of connecting to other broader mentoring schemes – watch this space!
The mentoring scheme will be flexible depending on the aim(s) that the mentee would like to work towards and we advise that during the first meeting the mentor and mentee agree the frequency of meetings, the aim(s) to focus on and the length of the mentoring period. We suggest a minimum of a 3 month mentoring period. We are encouraging mentees to develop an initial aim to allow for a good match to a mentor and this can be revised during the first mentoring meeting. The mentee should be proactive in the process, such as scheduling meetings and setting an agenda. The meetings can be held virtually or in person depending on the locations of the mentor/mentee. If it is found that the mentoring isn’t working for either party then the mentoring period can be ended early. In contrast, if the mentorship has been beneficial the mentor and mentee can agree to extend the mentoring period either formally and informally. There are three documents prepared that include further guidance, a form to complete at the beginning of a mentoring period and a feedback form to complete at the end of the formal mentoring period.
We are hoping for the BIOPOLE mentoring scheme to be a great success and a memorable achievement of the project! If you would like to sign up as a mentor or mentee and/or would like to access the BIOPOLE mentoring scheme documents please get in touch with the BIOPOLE ECR representative (2023-24) Chelsey Baker at chelsey.baker@noc.ac.uk.
I am a Scientific Data Manager at the UK Polar Data Centre at the British Antarctic Survey. Before joining BAS, I have spent ten years in fundamental science working in several countries on plant hormonal pathways and stress response and then moved to a data-focussed profession. For the last ten years I work with marine data, specifically genomic data at EMBL-EBI and environmental data at BAS. In my current role, I archive, publish and integrate UK-funded polar marine data, develop databases, collaborate with other data professionals on developing the data publishing infrastructure and engage with national and international communities, such as the NERC Environmental Data Service, Southern Ocean Observing System, Polar Data Forum or Research Data Alliance.
In BIOPOLE I am the data management lead ensuring that BIOPOLE data are FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable). I coordinate the development and implementation of a roadmap for long-term preservation of data from this large multidisciplinary project. I also take responsibility for the BIOPOLE data webpages, data management training and visualisation of BIOPOLE fieldwork for stakeholders and will support the BIOPOLE Antarctic cruise on the RRS SDA.
It is a privilege to work in the BIOPOLE multicultural community of friendly and highly skilled professionals and I enjoy getting to know people in the team.
I like plants, drawing their shapes, studying their physiology, learning about their impact on human history, taking care of them in my garden, simply having them around me, so won’t volunteer for a mission to Mars.
On 12 June 2023, BIOPOLE’s Geraint Tarling and Andy Shepherd gave evidence at a hearing called by the All-party Parliamentary Polar Research Sub-Committee exploring UK’s relationship to the Arctic environment. This parliamentary committee is considering the UK’s contribution to the Arctic through scientific research.
Inquiries of this sort start with a call for written evidence, to which BIOPOLE responded with a document submitted in April 2023. The document answered questions around the benefit to the UK of supporting Arctic research activity, how UK institutions can be supported to enhance the UK’s leadership in Arctic science, and what research activities concerning the climate and environment ought to be eligible for UK support through NERC.
Geraint and Andy were invited to the subsequent hearing to expand on this evidence and provide the committee with further insight into Arctic science and its pressing concerns, particularly with regards the scale and rate of Arctic environmental change and our capacity to study it. Among the main issues we raised was the need for UK led programmes making longer-term measurements in the Arctic – laying the foundations for such a programme could be a lasting legacy of BIOPOLE. The committee’s findings are expected to be released in around 6 months from the date of the hearing.
I’m a biogeochemist working within the Ocean BioGeoscience group at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton. During the last decade I’ve been investigating the role of phytoplankton, zooplankton and bacteria on the marine carbon cycling, the coupling between oxygen production (primary production) and consumption (plankton respiration) processes and the influence of the community structure and environmental variables, such as temperature and dissolved organic matter, on the plankton metabolism. In BIOPOLE I wear two different hats:
a) I am part of the WP2 which focusses on the biological processes that modify the carbon to nutrient ratios in polar environments. Specifically, I run laboratory experiments with different cultured phytoplankton to determine the direct and indirect effects of warming and nutrient supply on microplankton cell size, metabolism (primary production and respiration) and biomass stoichiometry. Our results will allow to understand better the responses of polar phytoplankton to changing climatic conditions.
b) I am also the Strategic Lead for Arctic Fieldwork, and when I wear this hat, I serve as a point of contact between BIOPOLE researchers and BIOPOLE project partners, facilitating the interactions between them and coordinating the activities, to ensure that BIOPOLE maximize the resources available in the Arctic.
I was lucky to live a year in Tromsø (Norway) many many years ago, where I spent hours looking at polar plankton under the microscope. BIOPOLE has given me the opportunity to spend more time with these cold, beautiful creatures without the need of woolly hat and gloves.
I have green fingers, not only for phytoplankton, and I like growing my own veggies. Ohh, I love how tasty they are!!!
This time last week BIOPOLE community gathered for the Annual Science Meeting at Northumbria University in the lively city of Newcastle upon Tyne. Thank you to every single one of you who joined the meeting virtually or in-person!
The meeting lasted for three days and was full of exciting and interesting presentations delivered by project members, project partners, and stakeholders (the BIOPOLE community). Thank you all for taking the time and sharing your knowledge and invaluable expertise!
BIOPOLE Annual Science Meeting in Newcastle was a success due to everyone’s involvement. The poster sessions, breakout groups, and plenary discussions were all very interesting and productive. Thanks also to the Programme Advisory Board for their important feedback.
We are eager to implementing the suggested changes, actioning the feedback, and distributing outcomes of the breakout and plenary discussions, kindly collated by the rapporteurs, to the BIOPOLE community.
BIOPOLE is also very grateful to organisers who supported us in such a brilliant venue at Northumbria University!
We are looking forward to doing it all again around this time next year in Cambridge!
In my PhD I use satellites to study trends in Arctic sea ice thickness, and investigate how these changes will impact climate, ecosystems, and the economy. In particular I use satellite altimetry to measure the elevation of sea ice, which can be converted to estimates of sea ice thickness. In BIOPOLE, my role is to provide sea ice data and particularly sea ice thickness estimates. Currently I also represent the ECRs on the Executive Board and help to maximise engagement with BIOPOLE ECRs.
Outside of my PhD, I love scuba diving and am always trying to save up for my next trip! I’m originally from Southwest England but have loved living in Yorkshire for the past 5 years, having done my undergraduate and master’s degrees in Sheffield. Living so close to the Peak District has really developed my love for hiking and I go as often as I can.
Chelsey Baker
I am an early career researcher working in the Marine Systems Modelling group at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton. I have a background in observational marine biogeochemistry and switched to marine biogeochemical modelling after my PhD. My main interests are focused on the global carbon cycle, with a specialist interest in the Southern Ocean and the North Atlantic Ocean, and long-term carbon sequestration and how it may shift under future climatic changes. My research within the BIOPOLE project is focused on three main strands:
Analysing IPCC class models to investigate how primary production and nutrient fluxes from the polar regions changes in future centuries.
Undertaking high-resolution particle-tracking model simulations to determine how nutrient pathways might change out to 2100.
Undertaking high-resolution particle-tracking model simulations to determine the fate of carbon transported by the seasonal migration of high-latitude zooplankton to the interior ocean.
I am excited to get stuck into these various scientific questions throughout BIOPOLE and hope to help increase of understanding of the sensitivity of the nutrients in the polar regions to climatic changes.
Outside of work I enjoy spending my time reading, gardening, and spending time outdoors.
Jen Freer
I am an early career researcher working within the Ecosystems Team at the British Antarctic Survey. As Ecosystem Modeller, part of my job involves bringing together multiple types of data, from oceanographic (such as sea temperature) to biological (where a species is found for example). Using these data within models can help us to understand the factors driving species distributions and abundances, how these biological processes contribute to ecosystem function, and how environmental change may impact them.
For BIOPOLE, colleagues and I will collect specimens of small zooplankton species (mainly copepod crustaceans) and use statistical models to map their distribution in the Southern Ocean. Knowing their preferred location and depth during both summer and winter is really important information for modellers to be able to predict how much carbon they help sequester into the deep ocean. We will also team up with colleagues who study the seafloor to look at how the overwintering population of copepods overlap with the distribution of organisms living on the seabed, as these interactions are poorly understood.
The aims and objectives of BIOPOLE necessitate a truly interdisciplinary team of researchers which I am really excited to be a part of. When not in the office I am happiest on or by the sea, so in my free time I make as many trips to the coast as possible to surf, swim or stroll!
Anne Braakmann-Folgmann
I am a final year PhD student with the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at the University of Leeds. My work focuses on satellite remote sensing of icebergs. Giant icebergs hold vast amounts of ice together with terrigenous nutrients and can drift for multiple years before they disintegrate. Therefore, the goal of my PhD is to quantify where how much freshwater is released into the Southern Ocean from giant icebergs.
Within the BIOPOLE project my role is to contribute these estimates of iceberg freshwater flux. I am excited to collaborate with a wide range of researchers in this project and to learn more about the impact that icebergs have on their environment.
In my free time I like to go climbing and enjoy walks out in nature – especially by the coast.
One major question in BIOPOLE is whether nutrient delivery from land-based sources is sensitive to climate change? If nutrient loading changes in a warmer world, and importantly, the balance of nutrients entering the sea changes, then the impacts on polar marine ecosystems could be profound. To answer this question requires our research team to track nutrients as they travel from headlands, glacial meltwaters, through rivers and lakes, into estuaries and the sea. Along these paths, many important processes take place. Some may send nutrients to the bed sediments or change their form so that they become more or less available for aquatic life, including algae, bacteria and zooplankton. The BIOPOLE project is designed to harness facilities and expertise across the NERC Centres and our partners to design a monitoring programme capable of capturing these changes in remote Arctic and Antarctic locations.
The BIOPOLE team have worked over the past few months to develop an approach to measure the sensitivity of major nutrient sources to climate change, in both Arctic and Antarctic ecosystems. They embarked on their maiden ‘land-cruise’ to Loch Etive, Scotland, where the Scottish weather put them to the test.
Preparing for the campaign. The campaign was designed to prepare the field and lab teams for deployment to our four polar research stations, later in the project. These stations are Ny-Ålesund and the Tana River, in the Arctic, and Rothera and King Edward Point, in Antarctica. The first job was to compile a list of determinants to be measured and to prepare field plans and analytical protocols, equipment and shipping logs. The team will ship most of the equipment they need from the UK to the polar research stations, and back again. So, it is important that we don’t forget anything, but also that we don’t end up with crates of equipment that the field team doesn’t need.
Day one of the Loch Etive field campaign saw discussions on logistics and practicalities of sample collection. The team had previously liaised with the NERC Polar Station Management Team at Ny-Ålesund (their first stop) to scope out the fieldwork. One central challenge is on reducing the volume of water and sediment collected from remote locations whilst maximising the data produced for the wider scientific community. There are, however, other reasons to consider reducing sample volumes that need to be carried across land. Where samples are to be collected on foot from rivers in the Arctic, we will be in polar bear country and will be equipped with firearms. [We have re-named the UKCEH RIB ‘The Sea Bear’ – Ursus maritimus].
Day 2 to 4. Three sub-teams deployed to collect samples from 21 stations around Loch Etive. These stations included major inflows, sampled by foot, and transects along a salinity gradient down the loch, sampled by RIB Sea Bear. This latter survey was interrupted as winds topped 40 MPH, making boat work unsafe. Before the winds picked up, we did manage to sample some of the upper loch, in the hour or two break in the sideways rain. This uncovered a stunning display of ephemeral streams in full flow, and indicated the short-lived nature of nutrient delivery under extreme climatic events – a problem to be covered in our sampling design. Day 4 saw a final outing for RIB Sea Bear on the loch survey. If we didn’t hit this window, the data set would be compromised. It was worth the wait. The team were treated to glorious autumnal weather, calm waters, sea otters, seals and, double rainbows, and, best of all, a full cool box of sample bottles.
Of course, science isn’t all polar bears, double rainbows, and ephemeral streams. The reality is often many hours in the lab. The lab sub-team were based at the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS), Oban. Samples were dropped off through the week by the field teams for processing. The lab team worked to create a protocol for preparing samples, filtering hundreds of litres of water, and labelling bottles and tubes. This has been captured in one of the finest spreadsheets ever created; to track sample collection, preparation and storage, through to shipping to analytical laboratories in the UK and internationally.
What information will we produce? Our samples will be shipped to various analytical laboratories to produce data on nutrient concentrations and tracers of nutrient sources so they can be tracked as they travel through the loch to the sea. Samples were collected for eDNA analysis, to capture snapshots of the biological communities across the loch. Field and laboratory experiments were trialled to assess interactions between nutrients and suspended sediments and algae, and the major processes acting to alter nutrient delivery from land to sea. In the end, we should know where the nutrients are coming from, how they are transformed as they travel through the loch, and how much of this makes it out to sea.
What happens next? The team is now working hard to review, refine and revise the protocols, based on experiences from Loch Etive and the data produced, in consultation with our project partners. When everyone is happy, we will publish the protocols on this website. They will form the basis of the land-based field campaigns at the Polar Stations, later in the project.
Underwater robots will help BIOPOLE scientists understand how changing river runoff and melting ice will impact nutrient cycling in the high latitudes and beyond. But these robots need to be tested before they are sent off into the wild…
Many of the essential nutrients that are needed by marine algae in the polar regions are supplied by freshwaters, including glacial melt, river waters, and melting permafrost. As part of BIOPOLE, we’re going to track where these freshwaters flow when they hit the ocean, and what happens to all the nutrients that they supply. One set of tools that we have available to us to track these waters is autonomous vehicles – marine robots full of sensors that can measure the temperature, saltiness, and other properties of the water at very high resolution in space and time, independently of a boat. Also, critically, these robots can reach places that boats can’t reach safely (or at all), such as near icebergs and glaciers, and work with a much lower carbon footprint.
The BAS Polar Oceans team have recently got new additions to their robotics fleet, including a new rechargeable Slocum G3 glider and mini autonomous vehicles called ecoSUBs. Before the new kit is deployed in the Arctic and Antarctic as part of BIOPOLE, everything needed to be tested – somewhere a lot closer to home!
The first week involved a lot of work in the Scottish Marine Robotics Facility getting everything ready in the laboratory. The glider and ecoSUBs first need to be tested for buoyancy, so that they float in the water under the right conditions. This is done by adding or taking away weights within the frame of the vehicles, and then testing them in a large tank of seawater. Then the communications need to be tested, to make sure that the robots are receiving and transmitting data via satellite to and from the team’s computers and servers in Cambridge.
In the second week, it was time to let the robots out into the wild (and the early October driving rain). Thanks to friends in SAMS, the team were able to take the glider out into a nearby sea loch, deep enough to test deploying the vehicle and to run a “mission”, and into a shallower bay to test an ecoSUB. Except for a few little adjustments to make (as is always the case for a ‘dress rehearsal’) the robots worked well – and, most importantly, all were recovered at the end!
Next step: it’s back to the lab for the glider and ecoSUB for more tweaking and then, eventually, out into the Arctic and Antarctic in 2023-2024.
