British Antarctic Survey

Meet Paul Whitelaw, who's studying the (globally significant) populations of skuas and shags that live near Rothera Research Station in Antarctica 🪶 Paul starting dreaming of a job in Antarctica when a BAS scientist visited as a lecturer during his degree. Only a few years later, he's on the ICEWORLD podcast speaking to Nadia Frontier about dodging dive-bombing skuas and tracking hatching egg numbers in Antarctica! With 10% of the world's population of shags in the same bay as Rothera, Paul is able to use the changing fate of the birds there as an indicator for the health of the marine ecosystem as a whole. 🎧 ICEWORLD is available on all podcast platforms. Go search for it on the one you prefer! 📸 Patrick Griffin

Huge congrats to our EDI & Wellbeing team for winning the 'Wellbeing and Belonging at Work' Award at the Employers Network for Equality & Inclusion (enei) Excellence Awards 2024 🎉 Last year, we launched the internal "Safety Together" campaign, shifting the emphasis to place the mental and social wellbeing of our staff as essential strands alongside physical health and safety. It was the latest step in our journey towards an inclusive and psychologically-safe culture at BAS - where our staff live and work in an extreme and changing environment, or support those that do. It's fantastic to see the team's work recognised externally. #eneiX2024 #wellbeing #healthandsafety #mentalhealth

Did someone say 'White Christmas'? ❄️ BAS staff working across five research stations and on board the RRS Sir David Attenborough this year are guaranteed snow this festive season (as well as a penguin or two!) 🐧 With stations hosting activities like movie nights, gingerbread decorating, Secret Santa (where all gifts are handmade!) and delicious dinner with all the trimmings, there will be a festive atmosphere across the frozen continent this December! With station operations and science projects in full swing, staff will still carry out their duties - from the release of a daily meteorological balloon at Rothera, to monitoring baby animals like fur seal pups and macaroni penguin chicks on Bird Island. There are no worries about missing out though - with almost 24 hours of sunlight at this time of year in Antarctica, there’s plenty of time for everyone to get involved in the celebrations! What's in the 📸 (and who took it?) 1. Christmas dinner at King Edward Point Research Station (Alastair Wilson) 2. Mince pie making at Rothera Research Station - Rothera, 2019 3. Decorated tree at Bird Island Research Station (Martin Loughran) 4. Christmas dinner at Halley (Thomas Barningham) 5. Spending Christmas in the field (David Vaughan) Check out what else the teams have got going on 👇 https://lnkd.in/eWvx_ZFT

Are you ready for some festive Antarctic fun?? ❄️🎄✨ Then come and join British Antarctic Survey at the Science Museum's first ever Christmas-themed Lates! 💬 Chat with BAS scientists about their fascinating experiences conducting research in the icy extremes of the polar regions. ⛺ Step inside our cosy polar tent, try on authentic polar gear, and discover what’s on the menu for scientists working in the field. 🎶 Immerse yourself in the diverse and extraordinary sounds of Antarctica by listening to The Seventh Continent, a captivating new album blending stunning original music with field recordings from one of BAS’s 2023 science missions. 🚢 Hear the rumble of the RRS Sir David Attenborough at sea, the echoes of an inlet near the world’s largest iceberg, and the enchanting calls of elephant seals and skuas. So get ready to eat, drink and be merry, as the halls will be thoroughly decked for a festive celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths that will make this season truly magical - we can’t wait to see you there! Age: 18+ 📸 Ice core slice showing the bubbles of trapped air. Pete Bucktrout https://lnkd.in/ePDJaBWu

Postcard from Rothera #3 has arrived! ✉️ With the snow being cleared from the runway and our teams busy at work on the Antarctic Peninsula, the summer season is in full swing at Rothera Research Station ❄️ Rothera is the UK's largest Antarctic research station, and is currently bustling with activity related to the Antarctic Infrastructure Modernisation Programme This season, the focus is on fitting out the interior of the Discovery Building, our new science and operations facility, to provide critical services like; ⚡ Power 💧 Water ♨️ Heating 💻 Data The modernisation will help us continue vital polar science in the region - delivered in partnership with our construction partners BAM, Ramboll, Sweco, Hugh Broughton Architects and GA Barnies. 📸 A crane at Rothera, pictured during the sunset. Credit: BAM. #Antarctica #Construction #Polar #Science #Modernisation Get the full update here 👇 https://lnkd.in/ewawdwBh

👩🔬Learn how GOTT’s grant funding is helping British Antarctic Survey to reduce water scarcity by locating and monitoring sources of groundwater. 🔗Read the full case study 👉 https://lnkd.in/e4_n_x4h #climatechange #innovation

It's time for the penguin weigh-in! 🐧 These macaroni penguins from the 'Little Mac' colony on Bird Island are off to forage at sea to feed their new chicks. We've been using an automated weighbridge to monitor their weight and foraging patterns since 2009. Researchers can: ⚖️ Calculate how much food they have brought back, based on how much heavier they are on their return. 📉 Monitor how the weights of individual adult penguins change throughout the season, using a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) reader to identify individual penguins. ⌛ Learn how long adult penguins are foraging for. It seems like these penguins are just as intrigued by us as we are by them! #ecology #penguins #antarctica #zoology #marinebirds

The Arctic is warming almost four times faster than the rest of the planet. 🌍 How does the Arctic influence today's climate? 💧 Why does melting in the Arctic matter? 🥗 Who benefits from glacier nutrient factories? 🌡️ What's the link between Greenland's glaciers and warm ocean currents in Europe? Fresh off scientific fieldwork in the Arctic, marine geophysicist Dr Kelly Hogan and marine biogeochemist Professor Kate Hendry answer these questions, and reflect on what they saw and studied in this spectacular and important environment this summer ⬇️

🚨 New species discovered 🚨 You’ve heard of The Snail and the Whale, now an adorable new pairing has been found…get ready for The Mollusc and the Anemone! 🦪 A new species of mollusc - a soft-bodied animal with no spine and usually a hard shell, like oysters and snails - has been discovered by scientists from BAS and the Senckenberg Society for Nature Research. 🌊 Living more than 3,300m below the North Atlantic waves, the mollusc is not lonely in the deep abyss, but accompanied by an anemone, riding on its shell – an arrangement never seen before in this particular region. 🪸 The team collected several specimens of the new mollusc with their anemone friends from the seafloor, and observed many more using seafloor imaging. Curiously, they observed that the anemone changes the behaviour of the mollusc, which is unable to burrow as deep as it could without its passenger. Lead author, Katrin Linse, Senior Biodiversity Biologist at BAS, remarks: “It serves as a reminder that we know so little about life in the deep, particularly the way that it adapts and how species pull together to benefit from each other’s presence.” The new species has been named Fissidentalium aurae, with aurae after the Latin word for breeze, referring to the windy conditions during the expedition 🍃 Learn more about this fascinating recent discovery 👇 https://lnkd.in/evPn9QUE What's in the 📸 (and who took it?) 1. New species Fissidentalium aurae (Nicole Gatzemeier) 2. Sieving and sorting AGT samples (Viola Siegler) 3. Lead author, Dr Katrin Linse, working with the samples taken (Viola Siegler) 4. PhD student Jenny Neuhaus comparing DNA samples to genetic database (Viola Siegler) #Antarctica #polarscience #scientist #oceanography #marinescience #marinebiology #research #scientificresearch