Blue carbon capture, cold water gigantism, iceberg scouring, algal blooms…this episode covers a lot of ground! Rothera Field Guide Rob Taylor speaks with Aurelia Reichardt, Nadescha Zwerschke and Calum Stronach about how the cold Antarctic waters support so much life.

Rob Taylor is joined by Prem Gill, who has just completed two weeks of fieldwork as part of his PhD looking at seals from space. Find out why investigating how much light different Antarctic seal species reflect is critical to understanding how they might respond to future climate change.

Atmospheric Chemist Josh Eveson joins Rob Taylor to talk about the atmosphere and weather research taking place at Halley Research Station. 

More than 30 years after the hole in the ozone layer was first discovered, we find out why the instrument used to discover it is still useful today and what a normal week of research looks like for Josh at one of the most remote research stations in the world.

Rob Taylor

Host and field guide Rob Taylor talks to Catherine Maguire and John Law from the meteorology team who work at Rothera Research Station, where they put together daily forecasts for flight operations, boating and science. 

Elena Field works in the Mapping and GIS (or MAGIC) team at British Antarctic Survey. She talks to host Rob Taylor about how you actually go about making and maintaining maps and data of Antarctica. What are the challenges of this work and how does it differ from mapping elsewhere on Earth?