Jul 8, 2021 - Yusuffali MA: 'If your neighbour goes to bed without food, you are responsible'

From the Editor's Desk

Antarctica Is Warming. Are Invasive Species on the Way?

Algae, crustaceans, and other types of organisms can hitchhike into new ecosystems under the hulls of ships.

Most seaports today harbor a variety of inconspicuous, disastrous, and often spineless shipboard stowaways. Clusters of mussels, filaments of algae, or cliques of crustaceans that travel the world wedged under ship hulls can devastate ocean ecosystems (and cost billions) when the invaders breed in new environments and outcompete the locals.

Thanks to Antarctica's frigid isolation, the encircling Southern Ocean has been an exception so far. But with the Antarctic region now warming faster than almost anywhere else on Earth, and maritime traffic there on the rise, a team of biologists began investigating an unsettling scenario: could the icy waters soon change enough for a foreign species to flourish there and wreak havoc on the Southern Ocean's "near-pristine marine ecosystems?"

Continued here

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