ANTSIE has developed activities related to all four objectives during the first 30 months of the project, having now recruited all of the new staff. We have presented the plans for our project and initial results at four international conferences, ten national conferences, three public talks and an online blog.
Our main activities and results so far:
1. We successfully deployed GPS trackers on snow petrels during the 2021-2022 Antarctic field season, and collected stomach oil and feather samples for diet analysis. The fieldwork was based at the Princess Elisabeth Station, Antarctica, supported by the International Polar Foundation. We have been able to determine patterns of snow petrel foraging and links to sea ice distribution. Conference presentations include Honan, E.M. et al. (2022) World Seabird Conference, Cork, Ireland.
2. We retrieved 10 new snow petrel stomach-oil deposits from near Princess Elisabeth Station, Antarctica. The deposits have been radiocarbon dated, and chemical analyses have begun so that we can reconstruct diet through time. Conference presentations introducing the project include Cole, Y., Penny, C. et al. (2022) British Organic Geochemistry Society, Southampton, U.K.
3. We began chemical analyses on existing, radiocarbon-dated stomach-oil deposits from the Coats Land region, Antarctica. We have been able to detect changes in snow petrel diet occurring during the Holocene (the time since the Last Glacial Maximum). Conference presentations showing initial results include Stevenson, M.A. et al. (2022) British Organic Geochemistry Society, Southampton, U.K.
4. We published the results from a stomach-oil deposit in Dronning Maud Land. Here we combined bio- and geo-chemical analyses of the element content, fatty acid distributions, and stable isotope ratios to identify changes to snow petrel diet occurring over thousands of years during an interval of expanding sea ice before the Last Glacial Maximum (McClymont et al., 2022, Climate of the Past). We have presented this work at several conferences including the Geological Society of America (2021) and the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research Open Science Meeting (2022).
