All in the Name of Research…

Given that thousands of humans reside in Antarctica every year working in research stations, it is unlikely that the environment is going to remain unchanged. The reason for this is that humans create waste everywhere they go. Food and sewage waste are created by the simple act of living in Antarctica, but waste resulting from the research itself is also one of the main problems. Waste from building materials, batteries, fuel drums and laboratory chemicals (Aronson et al. 2011) are additional types of waste that the Antarctic is subjected to. This post will focus of sewage waste from chemical and human waste, discussing what the effects are.

I find this topic particularly interesting because in my view, researchers would not want to criticise their work. Much attention and credit goes to the research itself rather than the effects of the process that led to the discovery. This means that the extent of the waste problem may not be widely known. However, the waste problem was recently in the news (The National Geographic, 2014), where a study discovered that penguins’ tissues were found to be contaminated by a toxic flame retardant. The contaminants were being passed on by fish. The flame retardant supposedly came from waste from the McMurdo Station and another New Zealand base.

Chemical and human waste from the McMurdo Research Station

In the 1950s, before the Montreal Protocol (see my post on the Antarctic Treaty) and before any regulation, sewage was dumped into Winter Quarters Bay in McMurdo Sound (see figure 1) by those working in the McMurdo Station (Landis, 1999). The region earned a reputation to become 'one of the higher toxic concentrations of any body of water on Earth' (Aronson et al. 2011: 90), which certainly left a legacy on the environment. Contamination occurred from the disposal of heavy metals such as zinc and arsenic, polychlorinated biphenyl from abandoned sites (such as the Wilkes Station, see figure 2), and as mentioned, flame retardants (Tin et al. 2009).

Figure 1. Winter Quarters Bay in McMurdo Sound. Adapted from University of Nebraska-Lincoln (2005)

Figure 2. Abandoned Wilkes Station

One example of the effect of contamination from the McMurdo research station is a change in the behaviour of heart urchins. Lenihan (1992) conducted an experiment in Winter Quarters Bay. The author compared the burrowing behaviour of heart urchins near the McMurdo station with those near the Jetty and Cinder Cones stations, which are supposedly uncontaminated. The results found that 'heart urchins did not burrow into Winter Quarters Bay bottom sediment' but they did in Jetty and Cinder Cones bottom sediments (ibid: 321). This shows that the behaviour of heart urchins has changed due to contamination. In particular, urchins are finding the seabed toxic which shows that their habitats have become unsafe for them. Therefore one key finding from this study is that contamination has reached the bottom of the seabed. The potential effects of this can even alter survival rates because if urchins do not reach the seabed, they are susceptible to predators. Furthermore, some heart urchins are being killed because of the concentrations of metals found. Biodiversity in Antarctic oceans, is therefore being threatened by human actions.

A study conducted by Negri et al (2006) investigated contamination in sediments, bivalves and sponges in McMurdo Sound, which lies in the same region as the McMurdo Station. Figure 3 is a map showing where the McMurdo Station is, relative to the sampling sites used in the study. Metal concentrations were measured in Antarctic soft shell clam, called Laternula elliptica, because they are largely abundant which means they are good indicators of metal accumulation (ibid). Sediments extracted from the sponge tissue from the clam found the highest concentrations of copper, zinc, silver, lead and cadmium (ibid) compared to the other sites. This shows just how contaminated McMurdo Sound has become due to anthropogenic activities. Additionally, in the book 'Need for real world assessment of the environmental effects of oil spills in ice-infested marine environments. POAC 81. The 6th international conference on port and ocean engineering under Arctic conditions, Quebec, 27-31 July 1981. Vol. II', Robbilliard and Busdosh found that the concentration of the soft clam in Winter Quarters Bay has substantially reduced. This evidence also shows that these metal substances are harmful to marine life in the Antarctic waters.

Figure 3. Map of McMurdo Sound and Negri et al. (2006)'s sampling sites. 

So in summary, while research centres are an opportunity to find out more about human disturbance in Antarctica, they also, ironically, contribute to the disturbance as well. Biodiversity in Antarctica is unique to Antarctica and is being threatened by research stations’ waste. This effect is exaggerated by the expansion of research centres across the continent. Above, I mentioned that these studies represent the legacy of past waste disposal. Since the Antarctic Treaty, regulations have been implemented to prevent waste and contamination from affecting this pristine environment. It’s just a shame that past actions are having long term effects on the marine life in Antarctica. Was the regulation implemented too late? According to Negri et al., Winter Quarters Bay may have supported a rich community of benthic organisms prior to pollution from the McMurdo station, but communities have failed to recover since regulation was implemented. This indicates that perhaps it may have been.

It is important to stress that this post is not a criticism of the research undertaken, as written in my previous post, research is immensely valuable. It finds the effects of human activities and therefore helps find solutions. Rather, this post is a way of analysing the unintended consequences of the research. As was the case with regulating tourism, I emphasise again that more needs to be done to regulate waste. Next time, I focus on waste regulation. The scores for negative human impacts verses positive/ natural impacts on Antarctica are 6-3.