IMIS - Marine Research Groups

The BASWAP (Biodiversity Across Scales of the Western Antarctic Peninsula) sampled using Agassiz Trawl, Epibenthic sledge, box core and, in the water column, Bongo nets, Retangular Mid-water Trawls and took water samples on a CTD rosette. Sampling was undertaken from the inner shelf to shelf-break, across three spatial scales (1 km, 10 km and 100 km apart) and from sea surface to seabed. The cruise was designed to sample benthos underneath the most rapidly changing region of the Southern Ocean (both in terms of sea ice losses and rising sea surface temperatures), to give biodiversity context at typical shelf depths to the ecophysiology carried out in the shallows at Rothera Research Station and to investigate benthopelagic coupling. To study the latter the cruise examined predation of benthos by demersal fish and bottom feeding by krill, consumption of pelagos by benthos and finally pelagic phases of benthic life cycles and vice versa. The location of this cruise filled the geographic gap between the Scotia arc (sampled by BIOPEARL I) and the south Bellingshausen and East Amundsen seas (sampled by BIOPEARL II).