British Antarctic Survey 🐧

The world's largest penguin colony has lost its title 🐧 A remote volcanic island near Antarctica has lost over half a million chinstrap penguins since 2011, a decline so steep it could see the species reassessed as 'Endangered'. 🧵1/2

Everybody wants a bit of Antarctic krill: whales, seals, penguins... and humans 🦐 Krill are heroes of the ocean ecosystem, who also sequester carbon. Now, international negotiators are on their way to Hobart, decide how the Southern Ocean and the permissions for fishing there are managed...

And they’re off! ✈️ The first of our Twin Otter aircraft and their flight teams have begun the journey south, from Calgary, Canada, all the way to Rothera Research Station in Antarctica to start a new season of polar science! 🇨🇦➡️🇦🇶 (1/3)

Over approximately 11 days, they’ll cover a whopping 7,878 nautical miles, with around 53 hours spent in the air 🛩️ Want to follow along? You can track VP-FBB, which is currently leading the way south, here ➡️ www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraf... (2/3)

What links Antarctic adaptation to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease? The answer is in the cells from some very cool fish 🐟 Scientists from British Antarctic Survey and @ceb.cam.ac.uk have just looked inside living Antarctic fish cells for the first time... 🧵 1/8

But ALSO this could be huge for medicine. Protein misfolding is a key feature of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s. What could these extra large and productive protein mistake-binning cells in cold fish help us learn? 🧵7/8

What links Antarctic adaptation to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease? The answer is in the cells from some very cool fish 🐟 Scientists from British Antarctic Survey and @ceb.cam.ac.uk have just looked inside living Antarctic fish cells for the first time... 🧵 1/8

Low temperatures make mistakes in protein folding more likely. A misfolded protein can be really harmful, so cold-adapted cells need ways of dealing with them... Well, our guys the cold fish also have bigger lysosomes - which dispose of the misfolded proteins! 🧵 5/8

What links Antarctic adaptation to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease? The answer is in the cells from some very cool fish 🐟 Scientists from British Antarctic Survey and @ceb.cam.ac.uk have just looked inside living Antarctic fish cells for the first time... 🧵 1/8

The team grew cells from Antarctic spiny plunderfish. Huge shout out to our special guy, harpagifer antarcticus 🫡 The imaging reveals how cold fish have adapted to survive at a chilly -1.8ºC to 2ºC on a cellular level: Their bodies are slow - but their cells are very active. 🧵 3/8

What links Antarctic adaptation to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease? The answer is in the cells from some very cool fish 🐟 Scientists from British Antarctic Survey and @ceb.cam.ac.uk have just looked inside living Antarctic fish cells for the first time... 🧵 1/8

Shhh, try not to disturb this sleeping crabeater seal as you pass. She's a rare first visitor for Bird Island Research Station (a sub-Antarctic island). They normally prefer pack ice near the Antarctic continent and rarely travel this far north! Girl, that's a big journey. Let 👏 her 👏 nap 👏

Hundreds of whales strand on a remote beach – and no one notices for months. Strandings can be an early warning system for ocean health, flagging pollution, disease, and environmental change. But in remote areas, they often go unseen. 🐳 🧵1/2

“We shouldn’t just cry into our beer about it. We should actually try and do things about it." ☝️ BAS' Professor Michael Meredith for @newscientist.com. He's talking about the impact of El Niño on marine ecosystems - how we should be acting now to build resilience and protection approaches. 🧵 1/3

He's co-author of a new article that lays out the proactive approach needed for these escalating warming events: 🐟 Rapid adjustments to fishing (+ other stressors) 🪸 Rescue + relocate species 🧪 Invest in science during events 🛰️ Build future food, conservation + sensing infrastructure 🧵 2/3

Kveðja frá Íslandi! This weekend, in partnership with the British Embassy Reykjavik and the Science Technology Network, we welcomed diplomats, policymakers and guests from academia and business on board RRS Sir David Attenborough.

We hope that the data we’ve collected in Greenland, and the findings of this research, will be useful for both the people of Greenland, researchers across the Arctic region and communities across Europe who will be affected by the changes happening in Greenland.

Kveðja frá Íslandi! This weekend, in partnership with the British Embassy Reykjavik and the Science Technology Network, we welcomed diplomats, policymakers and guests from academia and business on board RRS Sir David Attenborough.

The ship was berthed in Reykjavík, Iceland after it’s epic month-long science mission in south-east Greenland.

Our director Jane will be co-hosting an event tomorrow at the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) to mark the 125th anniversary of Captain Scott’s British National Antarctic Expedition, which saw the discovery of the South Magnetic Pole and reached a new 'furthest south'. Tickets still available ➡️

We’ve been papped… By a satellite! 🛰️ The RRS Sir David Attenborough is visible in some of the latest Sentinel-2 images of Greenland, as was spotted by some of the eagle-eyed team onboard.

Led by the British Antarctic Survey, GIANT focuses on the giant glaciers that flow into Greenland’s fjords. When these glaciers melt, fracture and collapse into the ocean, they release vast amounts of freshwater into the North Atlantic💧

We’ve been papped… By a satellite! 🛰️ The RRS Sir David Attenborough is visible in some of the latest Sentinel-2 images of Greenland, as was spotted by some of the eagle-eyed team onboard.

🛰️ Sentinel-2 is run by Copernicus EU 🌍The images are used for remote-sensing science 📐 Each pixel represents a 10 metre square 🚢The SDA could be represented by a total of 7 pixels!

We’ve been papped… By a satellite! 🛰️ The RRS Sir David Attenborough is visible in some of the latest Sentinel-2 images of Greenland, as was spotted by some of the eagle-eyed team onboard.

What if the ocean current keeping Britain warm started to slow down? ☔ The AMOC acts like a giant conveyor belt, moving heat from the tropics to our shores. Models predict that the AMOC could slow down or collapse – potentially leading to new extremes in weather. 🧵1/2

Today, the RRS Sir David Attenborough set sail from the UK 🚢 bound for Greenland as part of the GIANT project – an ambitious mission to study how rapidly melting fjord glaciers are affecting Atlantic currents, climate, and wider marine ecosystems. #ArcticResearch #ClimateScience 🧵1/4

To understand this, the teams on board are deploying the robot A-Team: DriX skims the surface to map the glaciers. Gavia & EcoSubs dive in formation. The famous Boaty McBoatface dives 1,500m beneath the iceberg-choked fjords to map glacier geometry. 🧵3/4

Today, the RRS Sir David Attenborough set sail from the UK 🚢 bound for Greenland as part of the GIANT project – an ambitious mission to study how rapidly melting fjord glaciers are affecting Atlantic currents, climate, and wider marine ecosystems. #ArcticResearch #ClimateScience 🧵1/4