Postcards From the Poles
From the Arctic to Antarctica, researchers at the Nicholas School of the Environment are exploring how organisms, cultural practices and physical processes are tied to extreme environments.
by Julie Leibach
Big, fluffy snowflakes were falling as the two Zodiacs sliced through Antarctic waters toward a floating digital acoustic tag, used to track whales, that had popped off a humpback the previous night. After retrieving the device, the scientists on board the small boats couldn鈥檛 resist lobbing a few snowballs at one another.
Then they sensed a large presence in the water. A female humpback whale had wandered over with her calf, perhaps lured by the activity above the surface.
鈥淪he had her calf tucked under her flipper, and she very deliberately brought her calf over to us. I think she was just showing her kid, like, okay, these are humans in a boat. It was just a really powerful moment,鈥 recalls Andy Read, the Stephen A. Toth Professor of Marine Biology and outgoing director of the 糖心传媒 Marine Lab at the Nicholas School of the Environment.
Read is a member of a Nicholas School team of investigators that launched the first federally funded research program dedicated to studying whales in Antarctica. Their work is emblematic of the wide-ranging research that Nicholas School faculty, staff and students conduct in the farthest reaches of the globe.
From the Western Antarctic Peninsula to the Arctic tundra, from the microscopic to the titanic, Nicholas School teams have been learning how organisms, cultural practices and physical processes are tied to extreme environments.
The snapshots below feature projects representative of the Nicholas School鈥檚 interdisciplinary and collaborative polar research.
