Despite the global pandemic, the strong strategic relationship between the Falkland Islands Government (FIG) and British Antarctic Survey (BAS) has gone from strength to strength. Following the success of the previous austral summer research season, the Falkland Islands is once again positioned to be the gateway for exciting and important Antarctic science over the next six to nine months.
Plastic pollution combined with ocean acidification hinders the development of Antarctic krill in the Southern Ocean, research published in Marine Frontiers reveals.
Icebreaker HMS Protector sailed closer to the North Pole than any other Royal Navy ship in history on her first patrol of the Arctic. The survey and research ship crunched her way through polar ice to within 1,050 kilometres of the top of the world as she gathered data about the ocean and environment.
Seabird mortality in fisheries is a global problem and a major driver of the continued decline of many seabird populations. Unless appropriate mitigation is in place, longline fishing can cause high levels of seabird mortality.
The Royal Navy's HMS Forth has taken bomb disposal specialists to South Georgia as part of a mission to protect the island's wildlife. The ten-day environmental mission set out to remove bombs and ordnance left behind during the Falkland Islands conflict involving the Argentine armed forces in 1982.
Far underneath the ice shelves of the Antarctic, there’s more life than expected, finds a recent study in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, published this week. During an exploratory survey, researchers drilled through 900 m of ice in the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf, situated on the South-Eastern Weddell Sea.
Falklands flagged RRS Sir David Attenborough will spend the next two weeks testing anchoring, maneuvering, and dynamic positioning, as well as other engineering systems, such as freshwater making, that cannot be tested while in port. The trials will primarily take place in and around the Irish Sea, although some may take place on the West Coast of Scotland and the Celtic Sea.
The next stage of building a scientific support facility in Antarctica has started and to avoid the risk of introducing COVID-19 to the British Antarctic Survey’s (BAS) Rothera Research Station, the construction team spent two weeks in quarantine and had three Covid-19 tests prior to making the 11,000-kilometer voyage by ship.
Following its five-yearly Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) assessment, the South Georgia Patagonian toothfish longline fishery has, for the third time, been certified as a sustainable and well-managed fishery, according to the newsletter from the government of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.
Gentoo penguins are benefiting from a newly enlarged no-fishing zone (known as a No-Take Zone NTZ) around the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia following British Antarctic Survey (BAS) tracking research commissioned by the RSPB.