Recent UNE graduate and Marine Sciences professor conduct research in the Antarctic Peninsula

Stephan Zeeman, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Marine Sciences and Christopher Glover ‘15 recently returned from a month-long research cruise on the icebreaker RVIB Nathaniel B. Palmer in the waters off the Antarctic Peninsula.

Zeeman and Glover worked on a National Science Foundation funded project titled “Collaborative Research: Organic Carbon Oxidation and Iron Remobilization by West Antarctic Shelf Sediments.” This work collected chemical information about sediments and their relation to overlying waters.

Organic matter such as plankton, fish and other organisms grows in the upper layers of water and then dies and sinks to the bottom. There, bacteria can decompose the remains, turning the organic compounds back to their inorganic matter (nutrients), using oxygen in the process. The inorganic compounds move out of the sediment and into the overlying water to be recycled back to the surface by ocean currents.  

How much of the productivity in the upper waters reaches the sediments, and the rates at which these metabolic processes take place is of extreme importance in understanding ecosystem function of the Antarctic as well as other regions. The Antarctic is not well studied, and the work is critical to answering how important sediment fluxes are to enriching the nutrients in the region. This is especially true as climate change causes temperature increases that affect process rates.