Adelie penguins captured in Antarctica using a 3D-camera operated by New Zealand's Boxfish Technology. / Boxfish Research
New Zealand researchers have captured the underwater antics of Antarctica's Adelie penguins, using a state-of-the-art 3D camera.
A science team led by Dr Regina Eisert, a comparative mammalian physiologist at the University of Canterbury, has been on the ice to gain world-first insights into Antarctica's Minke whale and Type-C killerwhales.
Assisting the team is Kiwi start-up Boxfish, which has provided a specially-built, remotely-operated underwater vehicle fitted with a 360-degree spherical camera.
The scientists have been working at a channel cut into the McMurdo Sound to allow ship resupply of the US-operated McMurdo research station and nearby Scott Base.
This thoroughfare allowed them to closely observe the whales that congregated within it.
The boxfish camera was being lowered off the edge of the ice, capturing footage from angles and depths – up to several hundred metres deep - that divers could never reach.
The team has so far captured incredible footage of killer whales – as well as other species, like these adelie penguins, which can be darting through the vodka-clear water beneath the ice.
The study, part of a long-running research programme as part of the recently-established Ross Sea region Marine Protected Area, is supported by Antarctica New Zealand and a Pew Marine Conservation Fellowship to Eisert.
Being able to better understand the whales would tell us more about the health of the wider Ross Sea, one of the least impacted areas in the world's oceans, an important yardstick for measuring impacts elsewhere on the planet.
