An Italian icebreaker carrying scientists researching Antarctica has sailed further south than any ship has ever done before, trip organizers said Tuesday, in another sign of how the ice is retreating around the poles.
The vessel Laura Bassi reached a point with the coordinates of 78° 44.280 S in the Bay of Whales in the Ross Sea, according to the National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics of Italy.
The trip was made possible due to an unusual lack of ice in the area, the institute said. Satellite analysis last year showed Antarctica’s coastal glaciers are shedding icebergs faster than nature can provide.
“I am happy to have set a record, but at the same time I am sad to see that things are really changing here in Antarctica and in the rest of the world,” Franco Sedmak, the ship’s captain, told Italian news agency ANSA.
A previous trip with a different vessel to the same area in 2017 found impenetrable ice, he said.
“I never thought I’d find such ice melting after a few years to go as far south as we’ve gotten this year.”
Laura Bassi’s researchers collected samples to study the fish in the waters and explored up to 216 meters deep to help better understand ocean currents.
An initial analysis showed that the water remained extremely cold and with a high density of larval and juvenile stages of fish species, with some varieties rarely seen in the Ross Sea, and a large amount of unicellular algae.
Source: Terra
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