Where the wild things are- Antarctic Seafloor Biodiversity by Dr Huw Griffiths

From burrowing worms to sea lemons to twelve-legged sea spiders to life underneath the ice shelf – the Antarctic seafloor is the most biodiverse in the world, with over 20 000 species living in the region!! Today, in the third webinar of the Seabed Habitats Seminar Series, Dr Huw Griffiths of the British Antarctic Survey gave a wonderful talk and discussion on the vast range of organisms living at the seabed around Antarctica. The team’s recent discovery of the first hard substrate sessile community beneath the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf, situated on the South Eastern Weddell Sea, breaks all the rules of where scientists thought such life could exist (see the webinar and full Griffiths et al. 2021 paper)! A gigantic thank you to Huw for sharing his research and insights into studying the seabed of Antarctica as part of this webinar! The Antarctic seafloor is a very exciting place to work!!

Thank you to all attendees for signing up and attending from many different time zones and your questions and participation!

Reference

Griffiths Huw J., Anker Paul, Linse Katrin, Maxwell Jamie, Post Alexandra L., Stevens Craig, Tulaczyk Slawek and Smith James A. (2021) Breaking All the Rules: The First Recorded Hard Substrate Sessile Benthic Community Far Beneath an Antarctic Ice Shelf, Frontiers in Marine Science Available at: https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fmars.2021.642040