6 Reasons to Study Sea Shells in Antarctica

Hopefully you should be convinced that sea shells are awesome and it’s really important to understand how they are made (if you missed it check out the blog “7 Reasons to Study Sea Shells”) and so now it’s time to ask the question… Why study shells in Antarctica?

1.)           Extremely cool (ice cold)

The Southern Ocean is the coldest ocean in the world and it has been for a very, very long time (thousands of years)! With constantly cold temperatures around zero degrees Celsius, it’s truly fascinating to try and understand how important biological processes like biomineralisation work in this extreme environment.

2.)           Super shell building machines

Antarctic clams are great at repairing - they’ve evolved alongside icebergs – so they’re perfect candidates for damage-repair experiments.

3.)           Survival of the fittest

We urgently need to understand if Antarctic clams will survive rising temperatures. As the world warms up there might be no cold places left, we need to know how the clams will take the heat.

4.)           Clams on acid

 

The Southern Ocean is the largest sink of carbon in the world, and because it absorbs so much carbon it's actually becoming acidic. We need to understand how an acidic Southern Ocean might affect sea shells in Antarctica.

5.)           Societal gain

If clams build their shells differently in the cold, we could use the cold-adapted proteins for societal gain.

6.)           Ice – olation (Isolation)

Life in the Southern Ocean has been isolated from the rest of the world by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) for 30 million years! With such a long-standing isolation, life in the Southern Ocean is a little bit different to the rest of the world’s oceans, so it’s interesting to compare shells in  Antarctica to those outside.