King crabs invade Antarctica
By Eric Niiler
March 20, 2011
Sven Thatje has been predicting an invasion of deep-water crabs into shallow Antarctic waters for the past several years. But the biologist and his colleagues got their first look at the march of the seafloor predators while riding on an icebreaker across frozen Antarctic seas this winter. The ship towed a robot sub carrying a small digital camera that filmed the seafloor below. It caught images of bright red king crabs up to 10 inches long, moving into an undersea habitat of creatures that haven’t seen sharp teeth or claws for the past 40 million years. “There were hundreds,” Thatje said in an interview on board the Swedish icebreaker Oden, which docked at the main U.S. base in Antarctica, McMurdo Station, after a two-month research cruise. “Along the western Antarctica peninsula, we have found large populations over 30 miles. It was quite impressive.” Thatje, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Southampton in England and chief scientist on the cruise, is part of a U.S.-Swedish team of marine researchers who are trying to figure out where, when and how fast this invasion is occurring. King crabs, of which there are 13 species, live in the deep waters off Alaska and Russia and across the Southern Ocean in the waters off New Zealand, Chile and Argentina. But here in Antarctica, crabs haven’t been able to survive because, until now, it’s been too cold. As a result, many bottom-dwelling creatures such as mussels, brittle stars and sea urchins have not developed any defenses against the crabs. What’s happened is that the waters around the Antarctic peninsula have begun to get warmer. The air temperature has jumped almost 11 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1950s, and the average ocean temperature has increased by one degree over the same period. That slight change in water temperature has lowered a physiological barrier that had previously kept the crabs in check, Thatje said. When the water is too cold — as it has been along the shallow waters of the Antarctic continental shelf — crabs can’t remove magnesium from their blood. Magnesium is a common mineral in seawater, and if they can’t get rid of it, it causes a narcotic effect that stops them from moving enough to survive. Some scientists say the magnesium barrier may soon fall, as global climate change continues to affect wildlife at the polar regions. … The crab research team is analyzing the images of the seafloor, looking for clues into whether the crabs will invade and then leave or permanently colonize the shallow areas. Will their presence destroy the existing community or simply alter it? Previous cruises had spotted only one or two crabs, but now scientists are seeing entire populations, according to Richard Aronson, biology professor at the Florida Institute of Technology and co-investigator on the project, along with James McClintock of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. … “If you look at the warming trends on the peninsula, you would expect that the crabs would come back in 40 or 50 years,” Aronson said from his office in Melbourne, Fla. “But, boom, they’re already here.” …
