Arctic Tipping Points

We are back in Longyearbyen for a week already, but it has been too busy until now to post anything to the blog. This year we will perform an experiment similar to those of last year but adding a new twist. We will not only look a the effect of warming on Arctic microbial communities, but also to “the other CO2 problem”, acidification. Again, our experiment will cover most of the microbial food web including phytoplankton, bacteria, protozoa and even viruses.

The experiment has grown so big that the start has been very demanding. A lot of problems that we could not foresee had to be solved during the setup in a very limited time. We have been connecting hundreds of meters of tubing for both cooling liquids and treatment gases and leaks and trouble were unavoidable. Matching the power-hungry experimental units to the cooling capacity of the UNIS facilities has been also problematic, requiring extra work and testing the patience of the logistics department at UNIS. Getting all the systems working properly required that almost all members of the team were up for almost twenty hours per day, everyday from Monday to Friday. Despite the strenuous schedule, the team has continued working with amazing energy until everything was working smoothly. By Wednesday, the basic temperature and lighting setup was up and running, allowing to collect the water samples and start the experiment. Setting up all the gas connections required two extra days but everything was fine on Saturday morning. Thank you all for your hard work!

More about the team in the next post…

While the team of IMEDEA (Spain) is investigating the effect of ocean acidification and warming on larval stages of bivalves, Norwegian ATP members look into processes even earlier into the life cycle of benthic bivalves: fertilisation.

It is hypothesized that early life-stages of benthic invertebrates, particularly those species building calcareous shells, may be particularly sensitive to ocean acidification, perhaps in combination with increased temperature. Motility of sperm can be one factor explaining reduced fertilisation success. Thus, motility will be measured under different experimental treatments using a microscope video camera (see the video), and speed of swimming sperm cells will be calculated using CellTrak 1.3 program. The proportions of moving and immobile sperm cells can also be determined from videos. This gives us an indication of sperm condition, which can then be related to fertilization rates.

After cruises around Svalbard, the Barents Sea and the west coast of Greenland in 2009 ATP had a new cruise in 2010, which has come to an end in the port of Longyearbyen. It had been a cruise in good weather and excellent working conditions. The atmosphere on board was enjoyable and calm, and the science team was strongly dedicated to the various investigations that were carried out. As usual, the science crew was highly international. They came from 12 nations and worked in 7 different countries. After a social gathering on Tuesday night the entire equipment was packed, stored or brought for further work to UNIS in Longyearbyen.

All in all it has been a very successful cruise where most plans could be accomplished. Some goals were quickly reached. While we last year had to use the zooplankton nets extensively and despite that we did not find sufficient animals of the right stage and sort, this time we had obtained all animals already after the third day! A relative short, but essential cruise for the ATP project has come the end.

Finally, I wish to express my gratitude for the supportive spirit and good atmosphere on board. Outreach is an ever increasing activity of research project and the presence of the Spanish TV team was an important element in our endeavours to reach broader segments of people.
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The scientists and crew of Jan Mayen were invited to visit the Polish station in Hornsund. Founded 50 years ago this station is an important one for many branches of science, in particular geophysical research. We were all warmly welcome and visited the station to pick up three polish colleagues that had done zooplankton research for ATP. After having been introduced to the history and activity of the station a guided tour was made to the nearby glacier Hansbreen. It was a meticulous day and indeed one of the best the author has experienced on Svalbard. What a fine present towards the end of the cruise!

After returning to the ship with out 3 additional polish passengers on board we made an excursion to the inner part of Hornsund. In addition the other members of the 8 overwintering Polish station joined us. They had hardly been on a research vessel and after 10 long months at the station they enjoyed to actually see the inner part of Hornsund. The landscape becomes more dramatic and wide. Two Polar Bears were seen. Gasping and photographing participants lines the bow and the bridge of Jan Mayen.

On the way back along the shelf we soon run into dense belts of ice floes, had to change plans and tackle delays. But the general impression from this ATP cruise is that it has been a very successful one. Science wise this EU project is in fine shape.

Agatha Weydmann from IOPAS in Sopot, Poland, carried out successful experiments of the response of zooplankton to a warming climate in May 2010. The experiments were to be carried out at the Hornsund Polish Polar Station, Spitsbergen, Svalbard. This station, more then 50 years old, is situated in an extremely picturesque region on the southwestern part of Spitsbergen. Agatha and her two colleagues were supposed to fly to Tromsø and Longyearbyen and take a helicopter from there to the station. In comes the ash cloud of the Eyjafjallajøkul volcano and stops all flights to Norway. No chance to fly for many days. A decision is taken and with the ferry to Sweden and a car the IOPAS team drives to Tromsø, a more than 30 hours non-stop drive to the north. After arriving in Tromsø – by Gods mighty hand – the ash has disappeared and Agatha flies to Longyearbyen. By then the chance to take the helicopter is gone. Two snowmobiles are organised, but bad weather makes the 7 hours drive through a high Arctic landscape (mountain ridges, glaciers, ice-covered fjords etc.) impossible. Two days of wait and finally the weather improves and off Agatha drives. Then finally, after 7 days Odyssey Agatha and her team arrive at the Hornsund station. Ready to jump into a rubber boat to sample zooplankton and carry out the experiments. Business as normal…..

How to return from there to Poland? RV Jan Mayen, returning from the Barents Sea with another team of ATP scientists, makes her way through an ice belt into Hornsund and pick Agatha and her team up. Her experiments were stopped a few hours before the arrival of the ship and the equipment packed in a hurry. Jan Mayen brings her back to Longyearbyen and from there she can fly home, provided that there will be no ash in the air. Nobody knows what happens to a polish car parked in Tromsø…. Never work without a back up. Plan B would have bee that Jan Mayen would take the team back to Tromsø on a return trip, just 12 days later. 12 days. A piece of cake in the Arctic.

Research in the Arctic is not like research in a nearby laboratory in central Europe. Few readers of Agathas paper will have the slightest idea what it meant when she writes: “Zooplankton was sampled with a WP2 net at station x in Hornsund on day y”. And who else would have used 7 days of hardship with a big smile to be able to carry out an experiment? And without knowing when it would end? You and your team have earned the respect of the entire ATP team, Agatha! With such dedication ATP can never fail! A triple hurray for polish commitment to science!

We might not have gotten the bivalve species we looked for when fishing for clams last monday on the Jan Mayen but we certainly have been lucky to encounter ripe adults of various species. During the try-outs we managed to induce three species to spawn, absolutely necessary when you want to work with amounts of bivalve larvae of the same age.

The biggest problem has been to get females and males at the same time and our fertilisation rates have been disappointing ( a 30%) but we are learning. The clams are not in excellent conditions though after a full week in an aquarium so we will try to get ´fresh´ ones today.

Male Serripes spawning

Hopen is an island in the southeastern part of the Svalbard archipelago. Hopen was discovered in 1613, probably by Thomas Marmaduke of Hull, who named it after his former command, the Hopewell. Hopen is a mountainous and rather characteristic island: long stretched, steep flanks and flat on top. There are neither lakes nor streams, implying that the traditional freshwater fishing that is so popular on another island with a meteorological station in the Barents Sea, Bear Island. It is the home for a multitude of bird colonies, migrating Polar Bears and four dogs.

The Norwegian Meteorological Institute operates a manned weather station on the island with a staff of four persons, four dogs and four rifles. For the welfare of the crew, there are three cabins available on the island for their use. During World War II, the Luftwaffe placed a meteorological team there under cover of Operation Sizilien which was the German raid and temporary occupation of Spitsbergen on 6–9 September 1943. British, Canadian and Free Norwegian troops occupied Spitsbergen to deny German use of the islands and their rich coal deposits and to set up weather stations. Under cover of the attack, the Luftwaffe installed a weather station on Hopen Island, which survived through the winter, until weather conditions allowed Allied reaction.

Today a crew of four volunteers operate the station for periods of 6 months. They follow normal meteorological routines, run a radio station and have a refuelling station for rescue helicopter from Longyearbyen. This crew lives more or less isolated for most of the year with a few visiting ships or helicopter visits of the governor of Spitsbergen. We visited the station, using a rubber boat in the shallow and difficult waters that surround the island.

We brought with us the expeditions photographer and the Spanish TV team. Already on the beach we were cordially welcomed by the station chief and one his colleagues. To land on the beach was challenging, as a belt of ice floes was still on the beach and we hade to walk and balance over them to reach firm ground. Inside the station we were served coffee and cake, while enjoying the view, the snow sparrows and a nearby Kittiwake colony.

The TV team interviewed the personnel, were given a tour of the station and the sights. In particular the sauna attained a lot of attention. We were greeted by the Huskies who are indispensable during the time the island is enclosed by ice.

There are about 100 Polar Bears a year that visit the station. While some bears hang around on the ice all winter, most of them hibernate on islands towards the north and make a migration with the dice drift of the close to freezing point East Spitsbergen Current towards the hospitable feeding grounds in the south. Nobody can leave the house without their rifles and flare guns. In former times when hunting of Polar Bears was still permitted the station personnel was paid only a small salary while a substantial part of the income came from hunting, including Polar Bears. The impressive skin of such bear that was shot during those times decorated the wall of the station. It was one of the largest Polar Bears ever shot on Spitsbergen.

Back on board the TV team worked feverishly to produce a 2-minute movie for their TV channel in Madrid and CNN for South America. Indeed information about one of the most isolated and specific places in the High Arctic will be presented for a Spanish-speaking public!

Scientists from IMEDEA, Spain, and ATP have been dedicated to understand the relation between primary production and respiration in the Arctic Ocean. There is a surprising dearth of information in these matters and by far the greatest quantity of information from the Arctic Ocean has been derived by IMEDEA. In principle there should be a balance between production and respiration over lengthy periods of time in the ocean. However, in certain regions and times the ratio between production and respiration deviates. It has also been discussed that the ocean consumes more carbon than it produces. This surprising findings resulted in vivid debates from the missing carbon derives. To prepare a well-balanced annual budget it is essential to investigate various seasons and ATP contributes to this. So far few production/respiration data have been obtained from the spring bloom period and ATP will try to fill this knowledge gap.

The Arctic Ocean is the region on Earth supporting the steepest warming rate and is also particularly vulnerable due to the vanishing ice cover. Intense warming in the Arctic has strong implications for biological activity and the functioning of an Arctic Ocean deprived of ice cover in summer. IMEDEA and the University of Lund, Sweden evaluated the impact of increasing temperature on respiration rates of surface marine planktonic communities, a property constraining the future role of the Arctic Ocean in the CO2 balance of the atmosphere. Plankton respiration rates due to warming will soon exceed increases in photosynthetic rates. Bacterial production increases by two-fold and respiration by 8-fold (on average) with a + 6° C warming. The future Arctic Ocean may consume most of the autotrophic production through the microbial food web, implying that the harvestable production caused by more light and higher temperatures (less ice) will not increase. Arctic Ocean primary production models must be improved to include realistic temperature-depended respiration and metabolism algorithms. An future Arctic Ocean void of summer ice will probably be less productive as currently projected and increase atmospheric CO2 concentrations, thus adding to the general increase of CO2 concentrations caused by human activities.

At the same time of the cruise with the Jan Mayen as described by Paul Wassman in the previous post a couple ATP colleagues are working at the university in Svalbard, UNIS, to study the combined effect of temperature rise and ocean acidification on arctic bivalve larvae. Why larvae? Because this is the most sensitive life stage of benthic bivalves inhabiting the sediment of the fjords and studies have shown that temperate  larvae are affected by the effects of Global Change. We study the period in which the larvae first forms the larval shell, and want to know if calcification is hindered by changes in ocean pH.

Our team includes from Spain:

• Iris Hendriks,
• Amanda Dorsett,
• Paloma Carillo,
• Alexandra Steckbauer

from Norway:

• Paul Renaud,
• Mikko Vihtakari,
• Sanna Makkulen

After the cruise Johnna Holding (Spain) will return to tierra firme to work with us.

We have finished setting up the equipment in the lab and now only need the clams to produce the larvae. That is no trivial point as the bivalves need to be taken in the right time of year. Last monday we set out on the Jan Mayen and encountered 5 different species but only 3 individuals of the clams we set our mind on. We will try to see if the other species are suitable and part of the team went back to the Fjord today to try again. Let´s hope we will be lucky!

After the successful cruises and experiments at ATP in summer 2009 (see previous blogs) a group of ATP scientists is again in the field to obtain more data for the FP6 EU Arctic Tipping Point project. After months of preparation and discussions regarding the outcome of last years investigations (among other venues during the 1. Annual ATP meeting in March in Copenhagen) finally part of the ATP team dedicated to experimental manipulations and comparative analyses heads to the ice-covered waters of Svalbard and the Barents Sea. On board of R/V Jan Mayen they join forces with students from the ARCTOS PhD school at the University of Tromsø, an US American team of mircozooplankton specialist and Spanish TV team.

The team (to be introduced in greater detail later) consist on the following parties:

University of Tromsø
Faculty of Bioscience, Fisheries and economics (BFE), Institute of Arctic and Marine Biology (AMB)

• Paul Wassmann (cruise and ATP leader)
• Elisabeth Halvorsen (ATP secretary and scientists)
• Henrik Jeuthe (Technican, AMB)
• Rudi Caeyers (Photographer, BFE)
• Jon Terje Eilertsen (Engineer, BFE)

ARCTOS PhD school

• Helene Loedemel Hodal
• Anais Aubert
• Nathalie Morata (post. Doc.)
• Matias Langgaard Madsen
• Ananda Rabindranath
• Igor Berchenko

ATP

• Gareth Pearson, Portugal
• Ana Ramos, Portugal
• Johnna Holding, Spain
• Elena Lara de la Casa, Spain
• Inigo Garcia Zaradona, Spain
• Konstantin Solovyev, Russia
• Anastasia Nikishina, Russia

US microzooplankton team

• Gayantonia Franze
• Peter Laventyev
• Fransisco Moore

Spanish TV team

• Irene Fernández-Cuevas Novo
• José Miguel González

After giving the ATP team working with benthos under the leadership of Iris Hendriks, IMEDEA (UIB-CSIC), Mallorca, access to RV Jan Mayen to sample mussels for a spawning experiment on Monday May 3, we left from Longyearbyen for a first station in Isfjord. Here we had a full sampling programme with CTD, water bottles and various nets. We found cold water from the West-Spitsbergen Coastal Current and fair phytoplankton bloom. A good mix of healthy copepods.

From there we left for the West Spitsbergen shelf and to the shelf edge, were we took some deep samples from 1000 m depth. On our way we made short CTD casts and they indicated more and more Atlantic Water and increasingly stronger spring blooms. From there we went, at a good distance to Spitsbergen because of ice, southwards in the core of northbound Atlantic Water.

On our second sampling day we are in the core of Atlantic Water with a 40 m thick layer of surface water, probably from the West-Spitsbergen Coastal Current. We have a full sampling programme and will turn east in the evening, heading along the ice edge towards the Barents Sea and the Island of Hopen.