The Curious Ecosystems of Antarctica | Continent 7: Antarctica

I kind of joke with folks that January’s
the longest day of my year the sunlight
down there is incredible because you get
to see animals go about sort of what
they do in in perpetual sunlight in 24
hours generally if you have night time
if we’ve got an instrument on an animal
or it gets dark out you can’t work so to
have the constant sunlight in the summer
time it’s pretty remarkable my opinion
the most important piece of research
that’s coming out of the Antarctic right
now is understanding how different
species cope with the changing
environments the rapidly warming air the
increased amount of precipitation the
decreased amount of sea ice
there’s not one specific sort of nugget
of information but just learning about
how each species handles that sort of
stress in the different ways is really
important I think the the most valuable
thing people can know about climate
change is that the animals that have
adapted themselves for environments and
extreme places like the Antarctic simply
can’t cope with change that happens as
rapidly as it’s happening now and so the
rate of change is the most pressing
thing for ecosystems around the planet
and we need to share that information
with people and let people know that the
things that they do have consequences in
other parts of the world especially in
places that we think are sort of immune
to those changes but really are probably
more system