The thick ice of the southeastern Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean is formidable and therefore the Amundsen Sea is one of the most extreme and poorly studied ocean environments on Earth.  Rutgers scientists Robert Sherrell and Oscar Schofield will join colleagues from the University of Georgia (Patricia Yager), the Marine Biological Lab (Hugh Ducklow) and the University of California at Santa Cruz (Sharon Stammerjohn), to work with a Swedish research team to carry out a new study of the open water and ice-covered regions of this large Antarctic bay.  The effort will be conducted as a two-ship operation, combining the capabilities of the U.S. research vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer and the Swedish icebreaker Oden.  This international collaboration will focus on understanding the physical, chemical, and biological interactions that make this region the most biologically productive of any waters adjacent to the Antarctic continent.  Specifically, this project combines science expertise in physics, trace metals, carbon chemistry, phytoplankton, bacteria and zooplankton ecology to investigate why and how the Amundsen Sea Polynya (open water zone) is so productive and how the system might change in the face of future increases in regional temperature and in the rate of Antarctic glacier melting.

The Swedish icrebreaker Oden with sentinel on patrol.

The Amundsen sea at 3am on a December day.

The Antarctic ice shelf meets the Amundsen Sea.