South Pole Episode 14: Biodiversity, Food Webs, and Climate Resilience in Antarctica

In this episode, we sink our teeth into the Antarctic food web with marine ecologist Dr. Jose Xavier. Dr. Xavier, an expert in predator-prey interactions in the Southern Ocean, shares his insights on the complex relationships between species like penguins, squid, and krill. The conversation explores how biodiversity supports ecosystem resilience and how climate change threatens these delicate food webs. Dr. Xavier also discusses his research on squid beaks, the impact of climate change on top predators, and how marine protected areas can help safeguard the region. Tune in for a fascinating look at the Antarctic ecosystem, how it's changing, and what can be done to protect it.

Episode Guest: Dr. Jose Xavie

Find more on Dr. Xavier here.

Read Dr. Xavier’s Blog here. 

Episode Transcript  and more information on the Pine Forest Media Website

Follow Pine Forest Media on Instagram @pineforestmedia

Hosted, produced, written, and edited by Clark Marchese 

Cover art and PFM logo by Laurel Wong. 

Theme music by Nela Ruiz

Transcript:

[00:00:09.480] - Clark

Hello, and welcome to another episode of South Pole, the podcast that explores Everything Antarctica. I am your host, Clark Marchese, and today we are talking about food webs, squids, climate change, biodiversity, penguins, marine-protected areas, and cumulative environmental impacts. All right. In today's episode of South Pole, we are going to learn all about the Antartic Food Web, and also we're going to learn what understanding how the food web is operating can tell us about ecosystems, overall health, and resistance to climate change. To teach us about this, we have our guest, Dr. Jose Xavier, who's a marine ecologist. Dr. Xavier's work focuses on predator-prey interactions in the Southern Ocean, particularly on foraging and feeding behavior of top predators, on how climate change affects key species. He's published a couple of books to help scientists identify squidbeeks inside of fish stomachs, which we'll talk about today. He's also done a lot of work with penguins. This person has a very cool job, and we're going to hear about his experiences from the field and how his research helps inform policies aimed at protecting these fragile ecosystems. Now, before we jump into it, if you thought any of what I just said sounds interesting and important and that more people should know about it, one way you can it really helps science communication like this reach more people is by giving us a one-tap five-star rating or a review on Apple podcasts.

[00:01:36.970] - Clark

It really helps science communication like this reach more people, and it also helps the entire Pine Forest Media Network to grow. So thank you to all of you who feel called to help us out there. And without further ado, let's hear from Dr. Jose Xavier. All right. Hello. Welcome to the show. The first question I have is if you could just introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your research.

[00:02:09.080] - Dr. Jose Xavier

Hi, I'm Jose Xavier. I'm Associate Professor at the University of Coimbra, which is in Portugal, in Europe, and I'm an Honorary Fellow of the British Anthartic Survey in the UK. What I've been amazed about all my life is understanding how the Southern Ocean is coping with change, with the different threats. It can be like climate change, pollution, fisheries. How can you make fisheries sustainable? She's looking at the Southern Ocean in a very passionate way, but also very scientific. What I do in my team is trying to really understand how Antarctica, particularly the Southern Ocean that surrounds it, that it cool waters, how these different threats are impacting the animals that live there. I've been working in the last 25 years. Since 1997, I've been working with animals like penguins, seals, albatrosses, but also fish, squid, and tautic krill. I had the great opportunity to go on a wide range of opportunities to go to the Southern Ocean and understand these animals. It's really exciting. This is what my team does here.

[00:03:19.940] - Clark

Okay, that is really exciting work. It's really cool that you get to interact with and study so many different kinds of animals because I think a lot of scientists really specialize on one. I think I know the answer to this next question because I've seen a photo of you on the internet next to a giant Penguin. But have you ever been to Antarctica? Maybe you could tell us a bit about some of the specific projects that took you down there.

[00:03:40.310] - Dr. Jose Xavier

I've been in the Atlantic more than 10 times. Mostly south of South America, so Atlantic Peninsula and the Scotia Sea region, being in the Antarctica so many times and having this privilege of working with penguins. I have numerous photos of people, Why you have a peng in your hands? Well, we work with them, so took a photo. It's not like saying, Oh, you are with a Penguin. Look at me. Well, we work on conservation and we actually want to protect them. But there's people with photos, and I have numerous photos of me with a Penguin, and they always say, Are you damaging the Penguin? No, we work with a Penguin. Usually, we're just measuring them, and we are actually working to protect them. But one of the key things I think it's really important to grasp, particularly if some of the audience wants to be scientists in the future, is that now science is very international and multidisciplinarians. We will bring all these different disciplines. One of the things that is really important that we want to do is do the best science we can and then communicate it the best way you can as well.

[00:04:43.570] - Dr. Jose Xavier

Do a lot of education outreach, interact a lot with educational organizations, with schools, because you become almost an ambassador of Antarctica. When you've been there, you're touched by such amazing experiences sources, and you know that your science can contribute to protect the animals that live there. This is extremely important. This engaging, just giving your personal experience, how to live in the Atlantic, how to work in the Atlantic, how we cope with the extreme environments, it's very inspiring for the generations. I always describe Antarctica as a planet within a planet. Imagine you're walking down the street and penguins jump out of the water and they actually come and greet you because they haven't seen a human before. It happened to me being on the beach, just sitting down, we're just walking to a pavement colony, and then suddenly there's, I don't know, dozens of them just jumping out of the water, and then you lie down, and then they come next to you just to be your friends. It's just like they have no sense of being afraid. I think it's that feeling that you are in a planet that actually... It's like being in a zoo, But people, the animals come to see you.

[00:06:02.230] - Dr. Jose Xavier

You are the weird one. This is how it is, Antarctica. It's such a special place.

[00:06:08.350] - Clark

Well, speaking of all these animals, one of the main themes of the discussion today is going to be biodiversity. For listeners, Biodiversity is all of the species in a given place. On a large scale, it refers to the variety of all life on Earth, including species of plants, animals, microorganisms, the ecosystem they form, and even the genetic diversity within the species. Now, a high level of biodiversity Biodiversity, meaning lots of different species in a given area, is extremely important for many actors, including humans and humanity, even economies, but also perhaps most obviously, ecosystems. Having this high level of biodiversity supports these ecosystems by making them more resilient to disturbances like climate change or disease outbreaks, for example. But today we're talking in the context of Antarctica. I'm going to ask if you can tell us what gaining an understanding about biodiversity in the Southern Ocean can tell us about the health of the the Atlantic ecosystem?

[00:07:01.970] - Dr. Jose Xavier

When I look at biodiversity, I'll just break the words into two. Diversity is being diverse, so different forms of things, and bio is life, so the different types of life, in this case in the Southern Ocean. And that's it. It can go from a bacteria, could be any organism, from bacteria to a whale. That's the relevance. The thing is why it's relevant for the Antarctica is that in the Atlantic, the animals are coping or evolved, a lot of them, the cold waters. They evolved to those apertures of the water being at zero degrees celsius or around minus one celsius to two or three degrees. They're really, really very used to the cold. So understanding biodiversity, how they occupy the different habitats, it's really crucial.

[00:07:50.360] - Clark

Okay, so there's a link between understanding the region's biodiversity and the ecosystem's resilience to climate change. I believe you worked on a research project in the South Sandwich Islands that was asking those very kinds of questions. For anyone listening to South Sandwich Islands or a group of islands in the Southern Ocean, somewhat between South America and the Antartic Peninsula, and quite a lot of Antartic research takes place there. But in any case, can you tell us what this project was trying to understand?

[00:08:17.470] - Dr. Jose Xavier

It's a very good point because when we're talking about bioneficy in climate change, one of the key issues for us, being a marine biologist, is trying to understand how the animals cope with it, cope with change. If you increase temperature will be able to deal with it. That's the major question that we want to do. What we've been finding is that different species have different tools to cope with climate change. For example, a Penguin, if the temperatures get too warm, if they can, they will just move south. They just try to get their food, what they like more south if they can. But imagine if they already live south and they have nowhere to go. Probably there'll be a major problem I'll give an example. Emperor penguins is one of the species that we know that at the moment, climate change might have a major impact on them in the next 100 years. You know that with Antarctica, with air temperatures increasing, it's going to affect them. We know the models. For us to build models to understand what is likely to happen in the future, we need the data now. This is what we're doing at the moment.

[00:09:27.150] - Dr. Jose Xavier

It's trying to collect all the scientific information about the population, the diet, where they go, where these Emperor penguins go, so that we'll really understand that if these temperatures change, what is likely to happen in the future. The second question is, how is it important to study biodiversity in a remote area like South Sandwich Islands, which is our tiny islands just right at the edge of the Southern Ocean. They are crucial because they that interface between really cold waters of the Antarctica, very close to the continent, to getting warm waters for the north. They are in the interface of those animals that cope really well with colds, with the animals that are able to adapt to more and warmer waters. As things are getting warmer, so this is slowly going down. What we want to do, and this was the PhD studies of one of my students, Jose Quiroz. He just finished his PhD thesis. He was trying to understand which organisms live where in this interface in these islands. In this archipelago, a few islands are further north in warmer waters and the other ones in the cold waters. In the same region, It's very interesting to understand deep sea ecosystems because the temperatures are really cold in the deep sea and they are fisheries occurring in the region.

[00:10:53.660] - Dr. Jose Xavier

We have fisheries, we have the impact of likely of climate change in the region, and understand understanding animals that cope with the deep sea ecosystems. That make it that area very interesting to study. We found that these animals or these ecosystems are relatively different, and we have to be very careful now on how you manage it. But we still have a lot of research to do, really.

[00:11:20.270] - Clark

It seems one of the ways we can get a grasp on a region's biodiversity is through looking at what animals eat or their diet. But this is a new method for me. Maybe you can help us understand how that works, how, I guess, using predators as, I guess, a biological sampler would be the scientific term. Can you tell us how that gives us an indication of biodiversity?

[00:11:40.040] - Dr. Jose Xavier

Yeah, because in that South Sanctuary Islands, There's fishers around. The fishers, they use long-line hooks to catch the fish, usually in the deep sea. These animals, the toothfish, there's two species there that are commercialized, and they can reach almost 2 meters, 200 kilos. That's huge. They're a big fish. I'll give an example. Rather than trying to use a scientific net, usually, scientific nets are relatively small, they are a bit slow, they are very good at settling certain parts of organisms. But if I want to catch, for example, squid, squid are much faster to escape nets. What do we do? Let's use fisheries and use this toothfish to catch the squid for us. When you catch, for example, you went on the fishing vessels where they were catching the fish to sell in the market, we would keep the stomachs and collect tiny small muscle samples to characterize what they were eating. Particularly, looking at their stomachs, you want to find the squid that we want to study because squid is one of the organisms that most likely are able to cope with climate change. Why? Because they are fast-growing, most of the squid is one to two years.

[00:13:04.490] - Dr. Jose Xavier

So they hatch from the eggs, they grow, grow, they eat, eat, eat, grow, grow, grow, and they produce once and they die. So they are really good for a squid that is one to two years. They really give you a snapshot how they're coping with change. And so the best way to do it is using their natural predators. So if there are fisheries that are catching the fish, why not using the fish to understand deep sea ecosystems, what what they eat in their interlink?

[00:13:32.480] - Clark

That's so interesting. You look inside the stomach and you try and find out what squid they eat, for example.

[00:13:37.820] - Dr. Jose Xavier

We've been doing that for quite a while and we published a couple of books. One of the key things that we have to understand in science is there's still a lot of work to do. Lots, a lot of work to do. We just published a couple of books in the last, well, 10 years. One was just identifying crustace. I'll just get the book here. We There are two books. This is the most recent one. This is how geek I am. We have a book that will help scientists to identify crustations, like from crabs to krill, different type of animals or crustations. You think, Well, why corsations are important? Well, they are important. Not only are numerous, but everybody loves it. Penguin love it, a seal love it, rails love it, everyone needs them. But the thing is, if you're trying to find them and identify them, it's a nightmare because until this time, a couple of years ago, everything was split up in different research papers, in different books, and so on. So you just brought all together colleagues from around the world and spend I've been for eight years working on this paper. Oh, this is good.

[00:14:47.950] - Dr. Jose Xavier

The other one, and this was on Squidbeaks, is a kaflapot guide. So kaflapots are squid, octopods, and cattlefish. It's that group of kaflapots. But in the Southern Ocean, it's mostly squid and octopods. The thing is, you can identify them through their beaks, so their mandibles. This is really important because if you want to understand the diet of a Penguin, you don't have the all-night squid altogether. You have their beaks. We created a guide reviewed on how can you identify through their pics, the species, how size, how big they are, and how much they weigh. If you do chemical analysis on them, we can understand where they live, What is their age? A huge amount of information. This is just an example. Just to have an idea on the research that we do. It's really fundamental because without these, they're hard to understand, for example, food web dynamics, how the scope with climate change is essential.

[00:15:47.710] - Clark

Okay, help me understand that link. What does putting together this food web tell us about resilience to climate change?

[00:15:54.620] - Dr. Jose Xavier

One of the conclusions that Jose concluded was that with With climate change, there's a tendency of the food webs to be more elongated. It means that you have more traffic levels. It means that they diversify. By diversifying, it means that instead of a whale eating krill, that's an example. We would have big fish eating little fish, and then another big fish eating the bigger fish and only reaching the whale. There's more links with it, but make it more fragile with climate change, so it's more diverse. I think that could be not very positive in the future if climate change changes temperatures, change the animals that live there, and the food webs become more diverse and more fragile. This is one of the conclusions that Juzé found that we have to be monitoring that region much more, and we need to do more science to really understand in the coming years how long are and what are likely to change the food web structure.

[00:17:05.160] - Clark

I just want to make sure I understand this correct. Are you saying that this conclusion is that the trophic levels are increasing in numbers in recent years due to climate change?

[00:17:12.970] - Dr. Jose Xavier

Not necessarily increasing. They are just diversifying. It means that you could be increasing your trophic levels. Yes, you could be like have another fish going higher and higher. That could happen. Or simply, you could have more more next to each other. We had squid and fish just next to each other and then going all feed to another high predator. It's just a question of if you have various trophic levels, more diversified, the food web itself can be more weakened. That was his rationale.

[00:17:50.280] - Clark

Okay, so it's more of a horizontal growth? Like they're casting a wider net?

[00:17:54.670] - Dr. Jose Xavier

It's both. Horizontal and vertical, not just one.

[00:17:58.940] - Clark

Okay. I'm I'm curious then, because as I'm hearing this now, you might think that an increase in diversity of possible options for food, more things to choose from, might be a good thing. Why does it, in fact, make them more vulnerable to that?

[00:18:11.970] - Dr. Jose Xavier

For example, Antarticryl is a shrimp-like prostation, and everybody eats it. It's very abundant at the base of the food web, and whales, and penguins, and everybody eats it, and everybody's happy, for example. In Bad Years, there's no Antarticryl, and there other zooplankton, so other small crustations. Who usually eat these small crustations are, for example, Michtophid fish. We have another level. Then the squid would eat the Michtophids. The squid and the Michtophids would probably feed the other ones, the fish that were above. Instead of going straight, it'll be more the energy transfer will be quicker and faster, diversing can not necessarily a positive thing. In a nutshell, it's just understanding the structure of the foodwebs. It's not necessarily biodiversity because all the biodiversity, the different phytoquorums on the foodwebs are always there. It's how the energy is transferred in a year that is good, that everybody's happy. When it's happy, generally, the transference of energy is very quick. When it's more fragile, it's more fragmented. It means that the energy is more diluted and the energy is higher. It doesn't flow as much, that's it. It becomes more fragile because if you eliminate one of the nodules, one of them, then it can become more fragile.

[00:19:42.600] - Dr. Jose Xavier

But again, what I'm telling you, Clark, is we just found out. This is really new. We really understand, is that a bad thing or a good thing? But the conclusion at the moment is that by becoming longer, more nodules within the food webs, it might become more negative under a climate change scenario in the future. The motivation of doing research in South Side of the Islands is because we don't know and because it's on that interface between cold waters from the Atlantic and warmer waters. We want to understand how food webs will deal with this change of warming of these threats. That's the main reason.

[00:20:23.160] - Clark

Okay, so it's not quite possible to attribute the less efficient nature of the trophic levels to climate change just yet, or are able to do that?

[00:20:31.300] - Dr. Jose Xavier

We estimate that it's likely that climate change will affect the food web structure. We need more data to make sure that it is. With the data that we have, it gives us that under the conditions that we have, that climate change will make the food webs longer and more weakened. But we need more data. That's for sure.

[00:20:53.240] - Clark

Okay, that makes sense. Maybe it's an indicator of scarcity if animals are having to diversify what they eat and where they're getting their energy Other than, say, reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, is there anything that humans can do to address this issue? Marine protected areas, perhaps?

[00:21:09.860] - Dr. Jose Xavier

It's a good point. It depends what we want. I think from my perspective, What we want is look at the oceans in a sustainable way. If fisheries can operate, I think they should. If we do it in the sustainable way, I think that's fine. If we have scientific evidence that certain areas should be protected and should have a marine protected area, that's fine, too. I think I'm quite happy with it. One of the key points of understanding what marine protected areas actually does is that they would allow to have a given area that, for example, small fish, or as an example, small fish can be there and be protected and allow them to grow. After they grow, they will be able to reproduce. By releasing lots of eggs, more fish will be there. We've done some research Very interesting research by tracking our top predators, albatrosses, penguins, and seals, across the Southern Ocean. We identified within Antarctica certain areas that we consider as hotspots of biodiversity. Why? Because the penguins and the seals and the albatrosses, they go where the food is. We were able to define around Antarctica where actually where they are, where are these hotspots.

[00:22:28.300] - Dr. Jose Xavier

What we found is that Where higher diversity is, is only one-third is at the moment protected in understanding that Antarctica itself is almost a natural reserve. It means that not only we should be conscious where the science is, where these animals go, which areas should be more likely to be protected, but most importantly, what should we do in the future? Because if these areas are, let's say here, and in the future with climate change, they will go slightly different, and you're trying to put a marine protected area and stay there forever, after 50 years, you're not protecting anything. What it means is marine protected areas should be adjustable. How they should be implemented in Southern Ocean? Well, the Antarctica Treaty has been revolutionary because they introduced the first marine protected area in international waters, which was just south of South O'Knees. The second one was on the other side, south of Australia, at the Raucey. This is like 50 times the size of Portugal. They're talking about major decisions politically to protect certain areas of Antarctica. But, not a but, it's just the way it is. But by having these marine protected areas, probably most likely there will be more enthusiasm to create more in other parts of Antarctica because you will be able to manage better fisheries or dealing with pollution or with tourism, for example.

[00:24:07.500] - Dr. Jose Xavier

But always seeing that marine protected areas, from my perspective, should be in a way that looking at us as human relations relating to the environment in a sustainable way. How can we be there, minimizing the impact? If we have fisheries, fine. If they are all managed, there's no problem. But there will be enough food for the animals that live there, for the penguins, for the seals, for the albatrosses, for everyone. I think we can do that. But Antarctica has been pioneering in marine protected areas in international waters, and I think that most likely there will be more in the future. We are in the It's a wide track, and politically, I think we're doing well.

[00:24:49.080] - Clark

Okay. Then I guess when deciding where a marine protected area should be, I imagine there's a lot that goes into that. I came across another research project that you did that was a bio regionalization of the Southern Ocean. I had never heard that word before. Can you tell us what is a bioregionalization?

[00:25:07.410] - Dr. Jose Xavier

That was started by Andrew Kostable and their group more than 10 years ago. The reason The interesting thing is that when we look at the Southern Ocean, I would say 50 years ago, we look at the Southern Ocean all the same. The food web would be the same, and the characteristics all across Antarctica would be very similar within the Southern Ocean. As we started collecting more information at different regions of the Atlantic, we realized that actually they were different. Temperatures could be slightly different, the habitats are different, the light intensity is different, the sea ice extent, the ice that forms around the surface of the Atlantic can be different. And by being different, scientists look at it and say, Well, if they are slightly different, they could be different regions within the Southern Ocean. So if they have certain characteristics, let's call it zone one. And there are other parts that have similar characteristics of the Southern Ocean, zone two. And so bioregularization looks at life in different parts of the Southern Ocean that have similar conditions. And that study really identified various parts of the Southern Ocean that have similar conditions. And why? Then you ask, Clark, why is that important?

[00:26:26.490] - Dr. Jose Xavier

Well, because if you want to protect it and you know the characteristics that are similar in that given region, probably you could adapt your level of protection or whatever you want to do in that region. You know that if you're going to take a measure to protect it, it could apply to all that a given region. Because the problem that we had before is that if you assume that you wanted to protect a certain given region, and then you say, Let's implement something to protect it here, and then you say, Somebody on the other side of Antarctica and say, This doesn't apply to us. The temperatures are totally different. The sea ice is totally different, and didn't make any sense. The main point of bioregionalization is looking at the Southern Ocean in the way that from a biodiversity perspective, you could see similar characteristics in the different regions so that when we're trying to protect it or trying to do or manage it in a given certain perspective, we can do it in a more useful way. That's the main reason.

[00:27:32.350] - Clark

We've discussed on the show how both climate change and fisheries can potentially pose threats if emissions don't reduce or fisheries aren't well managed. But I'm wondering, are there any other threats to biodiversity that we can identify through looking at food webs?

[00:27:47.280] - Dr. Jose Xavier

There's a wide range of threats. I think if you look at the... You could have the plastic pollution, and we have numerous studies now looking at pollution by plastic. Marcoplastics, nanoplastics. Actually, one of studies of our group was the first to identify microplastics in the diet of penguins in the Antarctica. We thought that it was like, it's not possible. There have been microplastic pollution has been identified in the sediments and in the water, but never in penguins. Then we thought, I'll probably won't find anything. We found them. Now there's numerous studies on the wide range of penguins and fish and so on that broke like a new door of science to understand that actually plastic pollution could be also a big issue, like it is elsewhere in the other oceans, but also in the Atlantic. Why is plastic pollution a problem? It's like you, Clark, if you decide to eat plastic, sooner or later, I think your digestion will be highly affected. It is logical that eating plastic is not good for you. The point is, if plastic is inert, so if you just swallow it and then When you get rid of it again, then you think, Oh, it's not a problem.

[00:29:03.120] - Dr. Jose Xavier

But what we have some evidence that possibly, including mercury or other metals, could attach to plastic. When you digest plastic, it's not the plastic itself that could make you a problem, but also they aggregate other problems, other threats without realizing. One of the stages we're in, and it's not just the solid notion, it's worldwide, is to tackle plastic pollution. It's One is, of course, cut on plastic. But secondly, and most importantly, is trying to understand the effects, the potential impacts of plastic would have on the animals that live in the ocean that we still don't know. I just mentioned mercury being attached, but it could be persistent organic pollutants, could be that we call it POPs, could be a wide range of other threats that I haven't thought about it. This is one of the things that we're looking at. Mercury is very interesting scientifically because we don't have major sources of mercury in the Southern Ocean. Actually, mercury comes from the air, from other areas of the planet that they use mercury and come from the air or from the water. They don't come from Antarctica itself, generally. What we have, what is unique about the Southern Ocean, the problem of mercury, is that the mercury levels, if you look at mercury levels in fish or squid, you think they're not very high.

[00:30:29.850] - Dr. Jose Xavier

There's not many sources of pollution. They come from elsewhere. It's not as high as as the oceans. But there's a problem, which is the animals, the top predators, like penguins or seals or albatrosses, they can reach very long ages. What it means is an albatross can reach 50, 60 years old. You think if you eat, even if you have small amounts of mercury on squid, for example, if you spend 50 years eating squid with some levels of mercury, that can bioaccumulate. So albatrosses, by being so old, they can reach levels of... They are some of the animals, marine animals, definitely within birds that have the highest levels of mercury. Of course, if you have high levels of mercury, it means it's not very good for your system, of course. And we're looking into that. We already evidence that mercury levels could affect the life of the animals. So That is a problem. Although the source of mercury can go from elsewhere, by the animals that live in the Antarctica can reach long longevity, they can affect their high levels of mercury that we find. What we want to do, and that's a good sense of hope.

[00:31:46.340] - Dr. Jose Xavier

Is there some evidence that the quantity of mercury is actually declining due to international submeasures? Actually in the Southern Ocean, we only have 10 years of data, so it's not still a lot, but it gives that the amount of the trends that we have on squid is actually they are declining a little bit. That's a good news, too. But the long term, for the ones that eat them, they still have higher levels of mercury. There's a sense that it's not the worst of both worlds, but there's some sense of hope in terms of mercury. They could be declining a bit. But one note of caution is that different animals bioaccumulate Mercury in different ways. So avatresses will try to remove them with feathers, for example, but fish, possibly, they will try to probably be accumulating their liver or other tissues. Different strategies will apply to the different animals. So there's not a full picture still on how mercury could affect the Southern Ocean, but it's definitely a problem.

[00:32:54.710] - Clark

I didn't know that about which parts of the animal's body the pollutant actually gets accumulated. That's definitely something that would perhaps make a huge difference. Also, maybe one note on this as well is that despite these being separate issues, they might even perhaps be compounding issues because if you're already facing the threat of climate change, for example, and then you have mercury on top of that, these populations can be under a lot of different vulnerabilities at one time that all pile up on top of each other.

[00:33:20.780] - Dr. Jose Xavier

Yeah, Clark, we have a word for it. Now, scientifically, we are addressing this. We call it cumulative impact. So climate change, let's say, pollution, plastic pollution, it adds on, trace metal pollution. So all these stressors, policy environmental change, of course, adds up. If you see, in the last 10, 15 years, we've been breaking down scientifically, look, what is the impact of mercury? What is the impact of persistent organic pollutants? All separate. And now we're saying, My God, Clark is right. We need to look at the cumulative impacts altogether. But of course, scientifically, that has become more complex as well because there's more variables. It depends on the organism, it depends what they eat, what is their life cycle, and so on. But we're looking into that now.

[00:34:14.460] - Clark

I suppose it would be challenging, too, because a lot of research questions are extremely specific, and research is so expensive and labor-intensive and takes a lot of time. But I'm glad we're looking at ways to ask these questions about cumulative impacts. That's the word, yeah?

[00:34:28.270] - Dr. Jose Xavier

Yeah, you had cumulative impacts. Yeah, of the different brands. The future now, and this is another example, is to put more scientists into policymaking. To accelerate the process of finding, having the scientific data, collecting the samples, go to the Atlantic, come back, analyze, publish the research paper, just don't deliver it to a policymaker. Actually, you become an active role and you become a policymaker. I'm the example. I'm the head Delegation of Portugal at the Atlantic Treaty meetings. As a scientist, I have a huge privilege to not only talk with other policymakers, but also bridging the different levels of language that we use because we have a lot of colleagues working on law and on an environment or on politics. We're bringing everybody in the same table and sit down and trying to make sure we communicate the best way we can in a language that everybody tries to understand so that we create much faster and quicker laws that will accelerate the protection of Antarctica, but also understanding these threats, these cumulative impacts, and do the best science, but mostly helping in identifying actions that we can do, not only in Antarctica, but even in our own countries.

[00:35:51.190] - Clark

Okay, I definitely support this trend. I think we definitely need more scientists as policymakers.

[00:35:55.380] - Dr. Jose Xavier

Yeah, for sure. And the future is that, I think.

[00:35:59.430] - Clark

Well, as we We'll start to round out this conversation, and I'm sure we could talk about this for a long time, but is there anything that we were missed not to mention in a discussion about food webs and biodiversity in this Antarctica region?

[00:36:11.580] - Dr. Jose Xavier

In the Antarctica, I think is a good model that could be applied elsewhere in the planet and the threats that are facing Antarctica. We didn't mention sea labor rise, but the impact of sea labor rise to the rest of the planet from Antarctica if the ice melts, will be huge. But this is an example of recognizing the importance of Antarctica. That would be one thing to the rest of the planet. The second point I think we haven't mentioned, I think would be very important, is recognizing the value of early career scientists. There's APEX, the Association of Polyearly Career Scientists. They were created now, must have been 20 years ago, in 2006, 2007, almost 20 years, and they were revolutionary. Why? Because we were giving the voice to the next generation of early career of scientists, and now they are well-established. For me, being there, understanding how our voices were built on was crucial. Why? Because when you are an early career scientist, you are more open-minded to use new methods, more critical thinking, you have more time, you're enthusiastic, everything is going for you, and we need those. We need to continue nurturing the early career to be engaging in Antarctica science.

[00:37:32.560] - Dr. Jose Xavier

That's one big message, and many thanks to everyone that's contributing. The second aspect is education. Polar Educators International were created in 2012. Again, they are Using the science to communicate to the general public, they have been crucial. Pei, they are amazing educators, group of educators, to bring the message to the general public the best way we can. Activities that work, to make make sure the best science is available to them, I think it's great. Also, noting that the next international poll year will be in 2032, '33. We're already thinking about it. We are in 2024, and we're still nine years ago or eight years ago, and we're already thinking about it. How can we get the momentum to engage the politicians, the national programs, the early career scientists, the educators, all communities to understand that the of the polar regions and the science that we do there can impact the rest of the planet. Looking at biodiversity and food webs, yes, for sure. We can learn a lot. What is happening in Antarctica could affect the rest of the world. I think that was one of the big messages that I have today.

[00:38:47.140] - Clark

I really like that answer. No one has had that so far. Well, the last question is, where can people find you and follow your work?

[00:38:53.020] - Dr. Jose Xavier

I'm very easy to find. I have a blog called Polar Science or on Facebook, if you write my name, it's very easy to find at the University of Coimbra, of course, or British and Atlantic, et cetera. Yeah, I'm very easy to find if you have any questions or if you're from a school and you like to do some Zooms or stuff like that. We've been working a lot with schools from the last 20 years, and so we are very used to go and lecturing either online or in-person, and we've been around the world on this. But of course, with online, we also want to use to reduce our ecological footprint. Actually, we quite promote doing a lot of web work. But yeah, if you're curious, you want to learn more, just contact me. I'll be very happy to help. The role of scientist is this, too. The one thing that I want everyone to remember, never feel that you're bothering a scientist. If a scientist is passionate what they do, they will read your email and say, Yeah, let's give an answer. They are enthusiastic and they are very keen. I think in terms of polar science, and particularly in the Antarctica and the Southern Ocean, 99.9% of everyone is really passionate and really happy to answer you.

[00:40:14.290] - Dr. Jose Xavier

Don't Stop. Never assume that, Oh, I'm bothering him. No, everybody's really nice. We're here for you.

[00:40:23.620] - Clark

I can definitely vouch for that being true. As someone who reaches out to a lot of scientists who study a lot of different things, I would say they're all very nice and friendly and interested and happy to speak to. Maybe I'll even also add that I have found a level of added enthusiasm from people in the Antarctica space, which is really refreshing and fun for me. Well, At this point, I want to say thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today. Thank you so much for coming on the show and teaching us about food webs in Antarctica and also for your really important research in this space.

[00:40:55.900] - Dr. Jose Xavier

Thank you, Clark. It was a real pleasure. And be in touch.

[00:41:08.270] - Clark

You've been listening to South Pole. You can find more information about this week's guest and links to their work in the episode description. Cover art for the show was done by Laurel Wong, and the music you're listening to was done by Nela Ruiz. I am your host, Clark Marchese, and this episode was produced and engineered by me. If you found it interesting, send it to someone you know. South Pole is part of a larger network of sciencey podcast called Pineforest Media. We've got one on plastic, one on drinking water, and a couple of new ones coming out soon. You can find more information about us in the episode description as well or on our website at pineforestpods. Com. We are also on Instagram and TikTok at Pineforest Media. If you love the show and you want to support science communication like this, a five-star rating across platforms and a review on Apple podcast is one of the best things you can do to help us reach more people and for the entire network to grow. All right, thank you to all of you who have made it this far, and we'll chat soon.