Zooplankton Ecology Lab

Antarctic krill: Under pressure and on thin ice

Both deep-sea benthic and under-ice habitats could provide important food resources for krill as well as potential refuge from their predators, but both are particularly challenging to study using traditional survey techniques, including nets and active acoustics. Consequently, we know little about how, why, and when krill occupy these habitats, nor do we know what risks or rewards each affords. Further, our limited understanding of how krill utilize these habitats hinders our ability to create accurate estimates of their total population size.

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By leveraging advanced technologies aboard the RV Falkor (too), specifically the ROV Subastian, this project aims to overcome the obstacles inherent in studying krill population dynamics and behavior near the deep-sea benthos and under sea ice – habitats that are otherwise largely inaccessible with traditional sampling. The use of video footage captured by the ROV, along with krill samples collected directly from near the sea floor and beneath the sea ice, will provide unprecedented insights into the behavior and population dynamics of krill in these elusive habitats. The collection of sediment and sea ice samples will allow us to assess the food resource within each habitat, while the assessment of predator presence will be used to infer predation risk. By better understanding the occupancy of cryptic habitats by krill, we will develop a more robust capacity to estimate the krill population biomass. This is critical to the conservation and fisheries management efforts in the region.

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This project is funded by the National Geographic Society.