Antarctica is beautiful but is being changed rapidly by plastic pollution, climate change and krill fishing, a marine biologist has warned.
Demand for products such as Omega-3 supplements, farmed salmon and nylon clothes is changing the once-pristine continent, said Emily Cunningham.
Cunningham, 33, hails from Staffordshire and has just spent a season in Antarctica on a scientific vessel, using submarines to explore beneath the surface.
Speaking to Yahoo News, Cunningham said that as her trip to Antarctica unfolded, she began to understand the scale of the environmental challenges facing the continent.
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“At first, the impact it had on me was a feeling of, ‘Wow, how lucky am I to get to go to this incredible place,'” she said. “Then as I started to understand the scale of what is happening, my feelings turned to angst and grief about what we are losing.”
Antarctica is the world’s least-visited continent, and was only discovered in 1820. Cunningham posted a viral Twitter thread about her experiences to call attention to how human activity is now changing Antarctica.
Cunningham said she remains haunted by the continent’s beauty, but hopes to raise awareness of the threats to life in Antarctica from krill fishing, which is used to feed farmed fish and for Omega-3 supplements, as well as climate change and plastic pollution.
“I knew I was going to see lots of wildlife – that’s what drove me to take on the job, the opportunity to get to go to Antarctica and see the penguins and the whales. But the landscapes and the ice I hadn’t expected to be quite so mesmerising,” she said.
“I had the opportunity to get down in the submarine and see the undersea environment. It was just like nothing else on Earth. It’s just like a living carpet, everywhere you look is life, it’s just spectacular.”
Cunningham said that her season in the Antarctic – and speaking to veteran scientists who have spent 30 years on the continent – led her to realise just how much global warming is already impacting Antarctica.
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“Global warming is happening five times faster there than the global average,” she says.
“It’s getting stormier, the weather patterns are changing and it’s already impacting the penguin colonies –we saw colonies that are 70% smaller than they used to be.”
Krill fishery – where ships harvest tiny crustaceans for use in Omega-3 supplements and food for farmed fish, among other things – is also posing a threat to the region.
Krill has already been impacted by climate change, thanks to the loss of sea ice – and the tiny creatures are at the heart of the Antarctic ecosystem and act as food for penguins, whales and seals.
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“The krill fishery is becoming concentrated around the Antarctic Peninsula, where the warming is so fast, a lot of changes are happening,” she explained.
Plus, the impact of the lack of krill is being seen in animals such as chinstrap penguins and whales, where a dearth of krill leads to years where pregnancies plunge, threatening populations, Cunningham added.
But the demand for fish meal made from krill is growing by 10% each year, according to the marine biologist.
As such, scientists hope to see regulated areas where vessels can’t fish for krill. At present, the only rules are around how much krill each vessel can catch.
One of the projects Cunningham was involved in monitoring microplastics in the water – and she found plastic fibres that could have come from clothing in every sample.
Indeed, there is now a theory that Antarctica is a ‘sink’ for plastics from all over the world.
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“Other researchers have found microplastics that are present in the air or snow, seawater and the sediment in Antarctica. They’ve even found microplastics in freshly fallen snow. It’s likely that they come by wind or by oceanic currents,” she said.
Microplastics are also found in crustaceans like krill and that could mean they end up on plates around the world.
“If you think krill are being fished at an industrial scale to be turned into fishmeal that goes into a salmon and it’s not a long way for the salmon to being eaten by people around the world,” Cunningham warned.
Global warming has also seen invasive species such as king crabs flourish in Antarctica’s seas, putting the underwater communities at risk of irrevocable change.
“They are finding that animals are hitchhiking on the nooks and crannies on the hole or the outflows of ships – what we call biofouling.
“Antarctica is the least invaded habitat at the moment, but we need to make sure that it stays like that.”
Cunningham added that she shared her Twitter thread to change people’s minds that Antarctica is a pristine wilderness – because it no longer is.
“It’s an incredible place that is already being shaped by human activity, but we’re pulling up to a point of no return where we can no longer do anything about it.
“I hope that I can raise awareness for people that wherever they live in the world, what they do has an impact on Antarctica – and they can make things better.”
She said that the response to her Twitter thread was ‘amazing’, adding: “It was really heartening, because this fight can feel incredibly lonely.”
Finally, Cunningham advised that the best thing people can do is to work to raise awareness of the threats to Antarctica – so that governments and businesses will take action before it is too late.