A team of researchers from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science are mounting an excursion to one of the most desolate places on earth, thanks to a private gift.
Adrian G. Duplantier Jr. and 1stAdvantage Federal Credit Union of Newport News donated an undisclosed sum to sponsor an expedition for a team of VIMS researchers to Antarctica.
Led by Professor Deborah Steinberg, the six-week trip is part of the Long-Term Ecological Research program at the U.S. Palmer Research Station on Anvers Island in the Antarctic archipelago.
The VIMS researchers will collect zooplankton at a series of sampling stations along the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula to research how climate change affects the microscopic organisms at the base of the Antarctic food chain.
“We’re interested in zooplankton for two main reasons,” Steinberg said in a news release. “First, changes in their abundance and species composition ripple up the food chain to affect fish, penguins and whales. Second, they play an important role in the ‘biological pump,’ potentially helping to move carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into the deep sea where it doesn’t contribute to global warming.”
The gift from Duplantier and 1stAdvantage allowed William & Mary graduate student Patricia Thibodeau and undergraduate Jack Conroy to accompany the team of researchers to the South Pole. Rather than spectators, Thibodeau and Conroy will assist the researchers in their work with the zooplankton specimens.
“I assist in experiments conducted on krill and salps, specifically filtering water for chlorophyll to determine primary productivity, and filtering water from fecal-pellet experiments to identify the carbon content produced from krill and salps over a specific period of time,” Thibodeau said in a press release.
Similar gifts from Duplantier and 1stAdvantage have allowed William & Mary graduate and undergraduate students to participate in Antarctic research trips at the Palmer Station since 2007.
This year’s expedition departed from Virginia in December aboard the research vessel Laurence M. Gould, and is scheduled to return in mid-February.
“I’m excited to sponsor young students interested in pursuing a career in the marine bio-environmental field,” Duplantier said in the release. “VIMS and W&M attract talented students who will make a difference discovering and finding solutions to rapidly changing environmental conditions.”
