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Census takes on deep Arctic
25/06/2004 12:51 - (SA)
Anchorage - An ice-covered pool believed to hold the world's oldest seawater is being scoured by scientists taking an inventory of aquatic life in the Arctic, the least-documented ocean on the planet.
A small sampling for the inventory has already found at least five new species as well as creatures previously unknown to the 3-kilometre-deep Canada Basin, north of Alaska and the Yukon Territory.
Many species in the basin's chilled depths are thought to have lived in isolation for millions of years.
Through the inventory, biologists, physicists and geologists from more than 50 countries hope to learn more about the genetics of species that can survive in such extreme conditions.
The project is financed by a $600 000 grant from the Alfred P Sloan Foundation that was announced on Thursday.
Researchers say a melting polar ice cap gives urgency to the project, part of a decade-long, $1bn global survey called the Census of Marine Life. The census also is planning to survey the Antarctic Ocean.
Past studies have yielded a surprisingly diverse collection of species - about 5 000 known multicellular ones - that live in arctic waters, according to researchers.
"It is certainly not the desert people thought it to be," said Russ Hopcroft, a marine ecologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the project headquarters.
"We need to begin paying more attention to biodiversity in the Arctic, which is more vulnerable to climate change because of its multiyear ice cover," Hopcroft said.
"There are animals here that are uniquely adapted to that ice cover. If the Arctic continues to lose ice each summer, these animals could become extinct," he said.
Since the mid-1970s, the winter ice pack in the Arctic has decreased 2% to 3% each decade, said Rolf Gradinger, a UAF sea ice ecologist participating in the study.
Scientists say that without large ice masses, which reflect the sun's rays into the atmosphere, the earth absorbs more heat, contributing to further warming. Ice also serves as a platform for walrus and seals.
"When the ice cover disappears, you lose an important environment," Gradinger said. "Changes in sea ice produce a domino effect."
On the net:
www.coml.org
www.sfos.uaf.edu
www.sloan.org
- AP
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