Last newsletter we had the pleasure to announce that Gareth Price from the University of Portsmouth would come to the Falkland Islands to work on his undergraduate thesis over Christmas. Gareth took charge of the experimental tanks up at the Fortuna aquaculture facilities in Moody Brooke. He investigated the responses of various kelp-associated animals to two different rates of warming. By exposing animals to different rates of warming, we can determine how much warming compared to natural conditions they can withstand. This tolerance varies, depending on the rate of change – animals can often withstand more warming when they are exposed to rapid warming compared to slow warming. These differences across time can allow us to extrapolate to long-term changes that resemble climate change (which is not a timescale we can replicate in the lab). This work is forming part of the larger Darwin project, where we will run long-term experiments and include several more species in this project. Further, we will compare the results to similar experiments we will run with species of kelp to understand if flora and fauna respond differently or not to ocean warming. We are looking forward to the results this year! We want to give a big shout out to Barend, Ash and Ed! 
They have been absolutely wonderful and vital in supporting this work. So thank you guys!

Image: Different animals have varied responses to ocean warming.

Image: When the nets are back on deck, we hose them down to capture as many zooplankton as possible in the cod ends.

Image: Many animals that are not zooplankton can be seen during a sampling day, including rafts of beautiful imperial shags that keep a careful eye on our progress.

Image: Jesse (left) and Rhian (right) are sampling zooplankton. Some groups are picked out for further analyses.

Image left: The Falkland Islands are surrounded by complex oceanographic dynamics that play important roles in structuring the marine biological community of the Falkland Islands.