Antarctic

Antarctica is a remarkable and remote continent. It is key to understanding how our world works, and our impact upon it.  It is the coldest and windiest continent on Earth. 

Antarctica and the surrounding Southern Ocean is a vast region – with a variety of fish, birds and mammals, including great whales, seals, albatross and penguins, which are an important part of the marine ecosystem.

Why is the Antarctic important?

The Antarctic ice sheet is the largest single mass of ice on Earth. It covers an area of almost 14 million km² and contains 30 million km³ of ice. Around 90 per cent of the fresh water on the Earth's surface is held in the ice sheet. This ice plays a vitally important role in influencing the world's climate, reflecting back the sun's energy and so helping to regulate global temperatures.

Antarctica is important for science because of its profound effect on the Earth's climate and ocean systems. The Antarctic has a crucial role to play in our understanding of global climate change. Year round, scientists at around 60 research bases study the impacts on the environment and the pollution caused by humans worldwide.

Around 100 million birds breed in Antarctica, with the continent's seven species of penguin making up 90% of them. Living in colonies with populations larger than some cities, and surviving in the harshest conditions on earth, it is no wonder that penguins are seen as a symbol of Antarctica. Penguins are a flightless bird, but excellent swimmers, that live on ice and in the oceans around Antarctica. They breed on the land or ice surfaces along the coast and on islands. Many more birds species migrate there to feed in the summer.

The Southern Oceans are teeming with great quantities of life. Large numbers of whales feed on the rich marine life, especially krill. Species include the Blue Whale, earth's largest living creature, and the humpback whale which are only now coming back from the brink of extinction after populations were decimated by commercial whaling, mainly during the first half of the 20th century.

Despite the extreme conditions in Antarctica, two species of flowering plants and more than 200 species of lichen, mosses, fungi and primitive algae exist in ice-free areas.

Challenges and threats

WWF in action

WWF is striving to ensure that, by 2012:

• a network of ecologically represented marine protected areas is established across 2,000,000 sq km – that's 10% of the Southern Ocean
• the impacts of climate change on the Antarctic and Southern Ocean ecosystems are understood, and effective adaptation measures are implemented
• fishing is managed sustainably, ensuring that fish stocks and ecosystems are stable and not over-exploited
• the impact from IUU fishing is no longer a major threat to marine ecosystems
• seabird populations have stabilised and started to recover
• mining and oil drilling remain illegal. Under the Antarctic treaty system there is a moratorium on mineral exploitation in the region until at least 2048.
• WWF work closely with the British Antarctic Survey who is one of the world's leading research centres and is responsible for the UK's national scientific activities in Antarctica.

Successes
The South African Government has announced it intends to gazette a vast reserve to protect the remote Prince Edward Islands in the Southern Ocean. The Prince Edward Islands will be one of the biggest Marine Protected areas in the world at 180,000km square.

This is an achievement of global importance which will help protecting the 450,000 King penguins that live on the Prince Edward Islands, as well as vast populations of seabirds, killer whales and seals.

The Islands, which consist of Prince Edward and Marion Islands, are located almost 2000 kilometres to the south of South Africa in the Southern Ocean, and form an important global biodiversity hotspot, which was subject to poaching during the late 1990's. The islands have also been threatened by illegal and irresponsible fishing practices in the past.