YESSS – Kick-off for a year-long research marathon in the Arctic

In the Arctic Archipelago Svalbard, this August roughly 20 experts from seven German universities and research centres set up their labs and instruments for the polar research project YESSS (Year-round EcoSystem Study on Svalbard). Coordinated by the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), YESSS is intended to yield new insights into climate change effects. To help make that a reality, a small team of researchers – and this is the unique aspect – will also spend the long, dark seasons at AWIPEV research station in Ny-Ålesund, the northernmost town in the world.

It took two weeks of hard work: traveling there, setting up camp, going out on the water, then back in the lab. Greeted with overcast, rainy skies, in early August the experts arrived at the Kongsfjord, the actual research terrain in Ny-Ålesund. After all, here the impacts of climate change can be studied better than virtually anywhere else on Earth. In the Arctic, ocean temperatures have risen twice as fast as the rest of the world. YESSS will investigate the seasonal aspects of this warming and how they affect the lifecycles, feeding behaviour and overwintering of flora and fauna alike, particularly in the darker seasons – about which we still know very little.

At AWIPEV research station in Ny-Ålesund, the experts have set up extensive research facilities. Using airplanes and the AWI research ship Heincke, they brought their equipment and materials to Svalbard. Now the standard measuring regime begins: a small team takes a boat out onto the Kongsfjord and, from now on, will collect water samples at depths from five to 300 metres at the same sites every week. At the same time, the team will gather data on e.g. the temperature or brightness at various depths. The water samples and living organisms in them will then be analysed in the research station’s laboratory.

The station is equipped with aquariums and basins simulating projected climate changes. “In parallel experiments with the current water temperature and water that is three and six degrees warmer, we’re investigating how marine organisms react to the higher temperatures,” explains Dr Clara Hoppe, a biologist at the AWI and Principal Investigator of YESSS. “Rising temperatures are a stress factor and can lead to higher resource consumption – with consequences for the entire ecosystem.” These experiments on temperature sensitivity will be conducted for key groups in the food web: for phytoplankton, microscopically small single-celled organisms that form the basis of the web; and for macroalgae (e.g. seaweed), molluscs (e.g. mussels), echinoderms (e.g. sea urchins) and fish (e.g. Arctic cod).

For the past few weeks, a research team has been catching specimens of the model organism Arctic cod with the AWI research ship Heincke. “In early August, we sailed from Bremerhaven on a direct course to Svalbard,” says Dr Felix Mark, a marine ecophysiologist at the AWI and the expedition’s cruise leader. “Along the way, we collected some samples of zooplankton and water samples.” After arriving at the Kongsfjord in northwest Svalbard, the team then began catching the Arctic cod that they’ll be examining on Svalbard and in Bremerhaven over the months to come.

Using a specially designed aquarium container on board the Heincke, the team transported ca. 500 fish to the German-French AWIPEV station, where researcher will use sensors to regularly monitor and record a range of parameters in the course of several months, including the animals’ heartrates and metabolic rates, energy budgets, and their growth in weight and length.

The Arctic cod is considered to be the most frequently found fish species in the Arctic Ocean – for the time being. Human influences and climate change are transforming its habitat so radically that all stages of its life are affected, from the beginning of laying eggs, spawning, and day-to-day life. These changes in turn impact the rest of the ecosystem, as the Arctic cod is e.g. an important food item for Arctic marine mammals and for the self-sustaining Inuit. However, our understanding of these processes is largely based on studies conducted in the Arctic spring and summer.

All participating research centres and universities will have access to the original samples of the other model organisms from the Kongsfjord, and to the datasets created in the lab. The experts will use the data gathered on resilience to higher temperatures, and on other successful overwintering strategies, to develop a new ecosystem model, one that will identify potential “winners” and “losers” in connection with climate change, as well as temperature tipping points for the ecosystem in different seasons.

In Ny-Ålesund, the setup and the initial research work for YESSS are now complete. Four PhD candidates will remain there, collecting samples and preparing analyses on a weekly basis. Every six weeks, two of the four will be transferred to the research station. These young researchers now face an exciting challenge: enduring the long, dark polar winter at the Kongsfjord. Over the next year, we’ll regularly report on how they’re coping, and how their research contributes to climate protection, on the YESSS social media channels.

Wissenschaftliche Ansprechpartner:

Dr Clara Hoppe
E-Mail: Clara.Hoppe@awi.de
Phone: +49 471 4831 2096

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