Radio Script
2003

Scientists around the Arctic plan to survey and catalog the marine species that live within the remote and largely unexplored Arctic Ocean. (Courtesy Ian McDonald, Texas A & M University)

Arctic Ocean Diversity
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INTRO: Scientists agree that very little is known about the world's oceans. Even less is known about the ocean beneath the Arctic ice pack. As Doug Schneider reports in this week's Arctic Science Journeys Radio, scientists in Alaska want to change that.

STORY: If you were to start at the equator, say, in Brazil along the Amazon River, and begin walking north, you will sooner or later start to notice fewer and fewer species of animals, birds, insects and other creatures. Scientists call this "species diversity"—and most agree that species diversity decreases as you move away from the tropics.

But there's a growing legion of scientists who think, or perhaps hope, that this trend may not hold when it comes to species diversity in the northern oceans. Ron O'Dor is Chief Scientist with the privately funded Census of Marine Life.

O'DOR: "Almost all of that evidence is based on land. Whenever we try to extrapolate what happens on land to what happens at sea, we can't extrapolate. The sea is a very different environment. It changes vertically as much as horizontally. At the bottom of the sea it's always four degrees (Celsius). There's always a four-degree habitat."

If the temperature at the ocean floor is so uniform, some scientists theorize that many more species than once thought may have evolved to live there, whether it's the ocean floor at the equator or the ocean floor in the Arctic. That's one reason why about 30 scientists from around the Arctic gathered recently in Alaska. Brenda Konar is a kelp forest ecologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences.

KONAR: "We had a meeting called the Arctic biodiversity Workshop, and what it entailed was bringing together researchers from many different nations to discuss what is known about Arctic biodiversity, and more importantly, what is unknown—where there are information gaps."

The ocean floor beneath the Arctic ice pack has mountain ranges, deep canyons and volcanoes that no one has ever seen. (Courtesy NOAA Ocean Exploration)

Scientists at the meeting said that much remains to be discovered in the depths beneath the vast ice pack that covers the region. There are hydrothermal vents, methane seeps, volcanoes and even entire mountain ranges that have never been seen. Katrin Iken is a marine biologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

IKEN: "The main reason is that it is ice-covered for most of the year. Only a very small fringe along the coast is ice-free in the summer. So it's just very inaccessible. This inaccessibility also raises the cost. You need ice breakers to go there. It's very expensive to go there."

	This Chrysaora jellyfish is among many marine species living in the Arctic Ocean. (Courtesy Kevin Raskoff, NOAA Ocean Exploration)

Ron O'Dor said surveying marine species in the Arctic is part of an ambitious 10-year Census of Marine Life plan to catalog the world's marine species.

O'DOR: "The focus of the meeting here was to bring together a team of people interested in all of the parts of the Arctic, starting with the ice and looking at the mid-water biodiversity and all the way down to the mud of the abyssal plain."

The meeting brought together scientists from Canada, Denmark, England, Germany, Japan, Norway, Russia and Scotland. Katrin Iken said a plan for prioritizing needed research has begun to take shape

IKEN: "The overall consensus was that the deep-sea basins, and some of the ridges dividing the deep-sea basins, are the least studied. We know most about the shelf systems, but there are also several things we don't know, and that refers more to faunal, animal groups, and these are the very small animals, the so-called maofauna. And the third point that came up is that we don't have a very good seasonal resolution. This is especially true for the ice. The sea ice itself is an important habitat for animals and plants. We know a little bit about what goes on in summer, but we have no idea what goes on in winter."

Most scientists doubt the Arctic is as diverse as say, the Amazon, but they believe there's a pressing need to explore it just the same. Ron O'Dor points to a rapidly warming Arctic climate as an indication that time is running out.

O'DOR: "The ecosystems in the Arctic are dependent on the ice, and when the ice goes, everything is going to change. There are various (climate) models that say the Arctic ice could be gone in as little as 20 years."

As Arctic sea ice melts amid a warmer climate, animals like polar bears and seals, as well as species of birds, invertebrates and fish, may lose their homes. (Courtesy Ian McDonald, Texas A & M University)

This is Arctic Science Journeys Radio, a production of the Alaska Sea Grant Program and the University of Alaska Fairbanks School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences. I'm Doug Schneider.

Thanks to the following individuals for help preparing this script:

Dr. Katrin Iken, Assistant Professor
Marine Biology
Institute of Marine Science
School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences
University of Alaska Fairbanks
Fairbanks, Alaska 99775-7220
Phone: 907-474-5192
Email: iken@ims.uaf.edu
Faculty profile: http://www.sfos.uaf.edu/directory/faculty/iken/


Dr. Brenda Konar, Assistant Professor
Institute of Marine Science
School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences
University of Alaska Fairbanks
Fairbanks, Alaska 99775-7220
Phone: 907-474-5028
Email: bkonar@ims.uaf.edu
Faculty profile: http://www.sfos.uaf.edu/directory/faculty/konar/


Dr. Ron O'Dor, Senior Scientist
Census of Marine Life
CORE
Suite 800, 1755 Massachusetts Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20036-2102
Phone: 202-448-1233
Email: rodor@coreocean.org
Web: www.coml.org

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Related websites

ANaGISA (Alaska Natural Geography in Shore Areas)

Census of Marine Life

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