Video of Antarctic sea floor damage by anchors a warning to tourism sector
Matthew Mulrennan was trying to find and film the elusive colossal squid in Antarctica when his underwater footage revealed something worrying in the deep.
The footage revealed a sea floor scoured of life with "deep grooves" that suggested damage by anchor chains.
"You could clearly see this delineation between where there was abundant marine life and where the chain and anchor had disrupted the sea floor," Mr Mulrennan said.
It is the first video evidence of environmental damage in the sensitive polar region, Mr Mulrennan and colleagues report today in the Frontiers in Conservation Science.
An estimated 4,000 species live on the Antarctic sea floor, with around 90 per cent unique to the southern continent's waters.
Mr Mulrennan said most visitors might go there for the penguins, seals and whales, but the region's biodiversity was more like an iceberg.
"Almost all of it is underwater," he said.
"[The] animals that are there are very vulnerable. Some grow to extreme years of age including giant volcano sponges, which we found right next to the anchor damage."
Mr Mulrennan, a marine scientist and founder of not-for-profit conservation group Kolossal, was on a tourist ship visiting Antarctica in 2023 when he took the footage.
Concerned about what he saw, he contacted marine geophysicist and anchor chain damage researcher Sally Watson from the New Zealand National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research.
Dr Watson confirmed the linear grooves and harsh gouges, recorded in the popular destination Yankee Harbour next to an Antarctic island, were consistent with damage caused by anchors and their chains.
Mr Mulrennan and Dr Watson said the findings raised concerns about anchoring by research and fishing vessels, as well as a growing tourism industry in Antarctica.
They said more regulation and collecting of anchoring data was needed ahead of a projected quadrupling of tourists to 452,000 people a year visiting Antarctica by 2033–34.
Anchors can be metres wide, and crush the living things they land on, but it's the chain connecting the anchor to the ship that often does the most damage as it drags laterally across the sea bed.
Many Antarctic seabed animals grow slowly in the same place over centuries, making them vulnerable to chains.
Dr Watson said anchor chains probably had the second biggest impact to the sea floor after trawling by commercial fishers.
Research into anchor impacts is growing in places such as the Great Barrier Reef and other tropical reef environments but Dr Watson said there was a "big gaping hole" in Antarctica.
Mr Mulrennan surveyed 36 sites around the Antarctic Peninsula, and anchoring damage was only found at the Yankee Harbour site.
Dr Watson wasn't able to access voluntary anchoring data kept by the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO), so she used ship tracking data to estimate anchoring activity instead.
Eight vessels likely used their anchors in Yankee Harbour during the month Mr Mulrennan surveyed the area.
Dr Watson estimated a minimum of 1,600 metres of seabed would be affected if each vessel anchored in water 30–40 metres deep.
This figure does not consider the damage from the chain dragging side to side if the ships moved.
Social scientist Elizabeth Leane of the University of Tasmania, who was not involved with the study, said there were sites more popular than Yankee Harbour that hadn't been surveyed.
Professor Leane, whose work focuses on Antarctic tourism, noted Cuverville Island and Neko Harbour received more visits than Yankee Harbour.
Lisa Kelley, the executive director of IAATO, said the group welcomed "research into all forms of human activity in Antarctica".
"We acknowledge that this study represents a snapshot in time," Ms Kelley said."The insights provided will be shared with IAATO's relevant committees and working groups to support our ongoing commitment to safe and environmentally responsible operations in the Antarctic region."
Greg Mortimer, who founded the Antarctic tour company Aurora Expeditions, said operators had become more aware of potential damage caused by anchors since the 2000s.
He said tourist ships were able to visit Antarctica based on their impacts being less than minor or transitory.
"If that's not the case, further action is needed," Mr Mortimer said.
He said the "missing link" was knowing how much damage was being done and its significance.
Dr Watson said collecting more data on anchoring, as well as surveys of marine life, will be crucial to planning sea-floor-safe Antarctic tourism.
Mr Mulrennan said ships at times already operated safely in Antarctica without using an anchor.
When sea ice is high, vessels cannot get to water shallow enough to drop anchor and rely on dynamic positioning systems — where a vessel uses its own propulsion — to stay put.
Dr Watson said she recognised it wasn't possible to get rid of anchoring entirely.
"I want to be really clear about the difference between anchoring when you have a storm, and you're trying to protect the people and ship, compared to cruising up to a harbour and dropping anchor willy-nilly," she said.
In areas of high destruction, Mr Mulrennan suggested operators could agree on "parking lot areas" where all visiting ships anchor or that moorings be created in high traffic zones.
Parking lots were a "sound idea" according to Mr Mortimer, who said most ships anchored in the same place anyway.
However, he believes moorings would be vulnerable to Antarctica's extreme weather and iceberg damage.
Professor Leane said she was hopeful tour operators would take the research on board and come up with solutions.
"[Tourist operators] don't want a damaged environment as people are increasingly interested in seeing the undersea environment," she said.
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News.com.au
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- News.com.au
This is where you want to be if nuclear war breaks out
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ABC News
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- ABC News
Antarctic scientists analyse first samples from 'Million Year Ice Core' project
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ABC News
20-06-2025
- ABC News
Antarctic clouds and pristine air hold clues to climate model blind spots
From the deck of an enormous research ship, surrounded by icebergs, Chelsea Bekemeier releases a tethered balloon into the air. She's standing in temperatures well below freezing, stationed deep in the Southern Ocean, just off East Antarctica. It's about as far from civilisation as you can get. The closest city, Hobart, is 5,000 kilometres away. But for scientists like Ms Bekemeier, this remote part of the world represents a treasure trove. The Southern Ocean is known as the "engine room" for global weather and climate, yet it remains a big blind spot for climate data. Scientists from around the world are making the mammoth journey to this end of the Earth to try and fill in crucial gaps in knowledge and improve global climate and weather models. The journey, which she returned from last month, is not for the faint-hearted. It took Ms Bekemeier — who is based at Colorado State University — three flights spanning more than 24 hours just to get to Hobart. 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The balloon the researchers released was fitted with sensors to capture data from the inside of these clouds. Clouds are a crucial aspect of the Earth's climate system, acting to cool and warm it by reflecting sunlight and trapping heat, like a blanket. "Clouds are constantly doing this job of balancing the incoming sunlight," she said. "You can see that when you go outside on a hot day and the clouds roll in, and the temperature drops pretty rapidly. "Then at night, if it's really overcast, it actually feels warmer because at night they insulate the planet." Yet clouds are also the biggest source of uncertainty for scientists projecting climate change, particularly "mixed phase" clouds, which contain both ice and water. It's this type of cloud that Ms Bekemeier is trying to better understand. "The Southern Ocean is the cloudiest region on the planet," she said. 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"And for climate change, if we want to understand our impact and how to mitigate that effectively, we need to know what the atmosphere looks like without that pollution. "So, we have to find a location on the planet, which is as clean as possible … so then we can understand what the impact of humans is." This data has been captured in north-west Tasmania, at the Kennaook/Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station, for nearly 50 years. But now, Dr Humphries and his team have the opportunity to cross-check how fresh that air is with the use of state-of-the-art technology. "We've always assumed … that the air that we measured there is representative of that really distant Southern Ocean air," he said. "But now … we're taking the ship south-west, down into the Southern Ocean, to test how far Kennaook/Cape Grim is representative of that baseline air." According to both Dr Humphries and Ms Bekemeier, the research taking place in the Southern Ocean is a key part of understanding the impacts of climate change globally. "The Southern Ocean is vital to the future of our planet," Ms Bekemeier said. "Changes to this region will have impacts for the entire planet; impacts on the Antarctic circulations, impacts on the polar jet stream, impacts on climate around the world, impacts on weather in Australia." It's for this reason that both Ms Bekemeier and Dr Humphries say it's important the whole world works together, as part of a global endeavour to advance climate science. "We're part of global monitoring networks, and we're doing global climate models." For Ms Bekemeier, this hits particularly close to home. Her role on the Southern Ocean voyage was funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF). The NSF has faced significant funding cuts this year under the Trump administration, with hundreds of research grants terminated. "I am really devastated to see what is happening to climate science and science in general in the United States and the gutting of the US Antarctic program," she said. "I'm grateful that we have colleagues that can continue this work because we might not be able to do it in our own country."
