Antarctica Unfrozen

Have you ever wondered what it must feel like to jump into the near-freezing Antarctica waters through an ice hole and spend the next 30 minutes to an hour surrounded by sea spiders, giant sponges and seals?! Well, tune in for an epic chat with Marine Ecologists, Dr. Drew Lohrer and Dr. Leigh Tait from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, otherwise known as NIWA. Drew is a principal scientist at NIWA who has made a massive contribution to the advancement of marine ecology. His main area of research focuses on the organisms that live on the seafloor and their contribution to ecosystem function in estuaries and along coastlines. His work in Antarctica has shown that these communities are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change and ocean acidification as they respond to change more rapidly than initially thought. Leigh travelled down to the ice in 2019 with Drew for his first Antarctic expedition where he operated a BOXFish ROV, taking our knowledge of the under-ice environm