Research Objectives:
This project is an interdisciplinary collaboration with German scientists onboard the German Icebreaker, R/V Polarstern. Researchers will address:
+ The origins of the deep-sea benthic fauna in relation to the antarctic shelf and linkages to the deep-sea faunas of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans;
+ Hypotheses proposed to explain high biodiversity in the deep sea;
+ Deep-sea benthic community structure in the Southern Ocean; and
+ Biological processes including reproduction and larval development of benthic invertebrates. To deal with these themes of the overall international effort, Dr. Blake’s group will focus on seven polychaete families: Orbiniidae, Oweniidae, Paraonidae, Spionidae, Cirratulidae, Scalibregmatidae, and Opheliidae. Other polychaete families will be studied by other members of the team.
Continuing work begun in 2002 by ANDEEP I and II surveys, this project will collect data across South Orkney Islands, the deep Weddell Sea Basin, off Cape Norwegia, on the Scotia Arc, and off South Georgia Island. Samples will be collected with box corers, multiple corers, epibenthic sled (nets), and plankton nets. Samples will be carefully sieved using an elutriation technique to separate very small larval and postlarval polychaetes from the sediment. These will be studied alive, photographed, and preserved for further study in the laboratory. Some of these methods were originally tested at McMurdo Station by Dr. Blake in January 2000, and on a cruise to the Larsen Ice shelf (Weddell Sea) on the R/V Nathaniel B. Palmer in May 2000 and then fully refined on ANDEEP I and II.
There are very few data that address the origins of polychaetes in general in the Southern Ocean and even fewer for the families that are the subject of this program. These investigations will improve our understanding of these families as well as broader patterns of reproduction and larval dispersal in the deep sea. Members of the international team will compile a benthic community database that will also permit comparisons with deep-sea faunas in other parts of the world as a means to test hypotheses concerning high biodiversity in the deep sea.
