The Prince Edward Islands and their effect on the plankton ecosystem

Following a 20-year data gap, a recent paper by Luca Stirnimann and authors present new analyses of the plankton ecosystem at the Prince Edward Islands archipelago and sheds light on the magnitude and drivers of its island mass effect, which has to-date been largely ignored. They found that the archipelago strengthens the regional biological pump, …

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Congratulations, Ria!

We would like to congratulate Ria Olivier, the Principal Investigator of the Antarctic Legacy of South Africa (ALSA), for being jointly awarded the 2020 APECS Mentorship award. She shares the award with Dr. Amaelle Landais. Ria was awarded within the APECS Category, whereas Dr. Landais won in the Member Category. You can read about both …

Introducing the new APECSSA National Committee

I would like to introduce your new APECSSA National Committee. Having served as your Chair since January 2017, we now have a new Chair, two new Co-Chairs, as well as new members. At the same time we are saying good-bye (and a heartfelt thank-you!) to three of our National Committee members. Liezel Rudolph took over as …

Photo competition Polar Week March 2019 results

Here are the winners of our four categories (data, landscape, fieldwork and wildlife) of our photo competition held March 2019 for Polar Week. Congratulations again to all our winners and thank you all for your submissions. Keep an eye out for our calendar for 2020 - we will make it available online once we have …

Seasonal sea ice in the Southern Ocean melts twice as fast as it grows

David Attenborough described the freezing and melting of sea ice as the largest seasonal cycle on the planet. Nearly 16 million square kilometres of sea ice grows and subsequently melts each year in the seas surrounding Antarctica. So the winter sea ice cover is about 13 times larger than South Africa! This growth in sea …