When Maggie Halfman, a fourth-year marine science student, hears the word “Antarctica,” her imagination runs wild with images of the place she has yet to experience: The thick blanket of ice that covers the continent, which comprises one-tenth of the planet’s land surface. The whistling wind that dances across the expansive ice-filled landscape, echoing off the towering glacial cliffs. The smell of the salty, sapphire ocean scattered with icebergs. The cold on her cheeks.
As Halfman enters her final undergraduate year at the University of Maine, she won’t be buying textbooks as usual. Instead, she’ll be purchasing long underwear, wool socks and sea-sickness medicine (just in case).
In October, Halfman and several other researchers will board a cruise ship in Punta Arenas, Chile, that will head 837 miles south to Palmer Station — one of three United States research stations on the continent — located on the Western Antarctic Peninsula. Here, Halfman will conduct an independent research project and assist Jay Lunden, a school of marine science postdoctoral investigator, with his project exploring the impact warming ocean temperatures have on the development of cold-water coral larvae.
“I was pretty taken aback when I found out I would be going to Antarctica, and I don’t think it will fully hit me until I am actually there,” said Halfman, who hails from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, and said she was drawn to the University of Maine for its beautiful landscape and nationally recognized marine science program.
The research station they will travel to contains a biology laboratory, research facilities, two main buildings and housing for researchers. Offering year-round accommodations, the station supports 20 people in the winter and as many as 44 in summer. Until she departs, Halfman will be conducting research at the Darling Marine Center in Walpole for Rhian Waller, professor of marine science.
Halfman’s interest in climate change research was sparked during high school and steadily grew as she progressed in her undergraduate career with a major in marine science and a concentration in physical science. Her project is looking at how water masses are changing around the Western Antarctic peninsula using both oceanographic and biological analysis. By looking at CTD transects — conductivity, temperature and depth — from the past five years, she hopes to determine how temperatures vary in the area of Antarctica experiencing the greatest rate of basal melting.
During the voyage south, Lunden and Halfman will collect larval samples of Flabellum Impensun — one of the largest species of solitary coral in the world — from the ocean floor using remotely operated underwater vehicles. They will expose the baby corals to several warming scenarios, observing their physiological stress responses to changes in environmental conditions. Using these observations, the researchers hope to shed light on the implications climate change will have on coral organisms and marine ecosystems as a whole.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, changes in ocean acidification have been shown to significantly reduce the ability of reef-building corals to produce their calcium carbonate shells, or skeletons essential for life.
“We know that the ocean is warming, we know that the air is warming, we know that the oceans are starting to acidify. What we don’t really know, in most habitats, is what is going to happen to the organisms,” Waller said.
This will be Lunden’s second experience in Antarctica, but his first time going to Palmer Station. After his postdoctoral position he hopes to become a professor at a research university.
Waller, who will lead the expedition, specializes in the reproduction and development of cold-water and deep-sea invertebrates from around the globe and explores how these animals are affected by both natural and anthropogenic environmental change.