Over The Horizon

Of Penguins and Pollution

A broad range of research activities -- from counting Adelie penguins to assessing climate change effects -- are planned by the New Zealand Antarctic Programme this summer.

Adelie penguins are the subject of behavioural studies by Otago University, and Landcare Research continues its long-term penguin population study, aimed at assessing the health of the Southern Ocean ecosystem.

Teams from Auckland and Canterbury Universities will study the adaptations of fish to cold Antarctic waters. Organisms which can cope with environmental extremes have the potential to yield information useful in the food, chemical and pharmaceutical industries.

This season's scientists are also interested in the impact of humans on Antarctica, particularly on soils, seas and air around bases and camp sites. The Environmental Protocol to the Antarctic Treaty, which is soon to be enacted into New Zealand law, means the "footprint" of science must be light. The NZAP is looking carefully at waste reduction and management, field practices and fuel handling to ensure its operation is environmentally responsible. Vanda Station, a base for scientific work in the Dry Valleys since 1967, will be removed along with any contaminated soil, because of the rising level of nearby Lake Vanda.

This year will see the start of a five-year Industrial Research Ltd project to investigate the properties of sea-ice -- the formation of which doubles the area of Antarctica each winter.

Field geologists from Victoria University will consider the horizontal and vertical movement of Antarctica over the last few hundred million years, through studying uplift of the Transantarctic Mountains and the wandering of the magnetic south pole. Because New Zealand was connected to Antarctica about 100 million years ago, such studies can tell much about this country's origins.