Narissa Bax

Vimeo — In the kelp forest's tender embrace, where life flourishes, urging us to protect this enchanting, vital place- A scientific endeavour brought to life through the Kelp Forest Foundation's support and Dr. Narissa Bax's expertise at the South Atlantic Environmental Research Institute.

The Conversation — The military takeover in Myanmar this month is a serious setback for democratic reform. But the coup also threatens to permanently damage the Southeast Asian nation's precious environment, and harm the people who rely on it. Myanmar is renowned as a biodiversity hotspot, and supports more than 230 globally threatened species.

scar.org — Stylasterid corals, common name “lace corals”, are calcified, often colourful, colonial hydrozoans of the phylum Cnidaria. Their aragonite/calcite skeleton (Cairns & Macintyre 1992), gross branching morphology, relatively large size, and their association with commensal invertebrates (e.g. polychaetes and asteroids) make them an important component of the deep sea fauna in most oceans (Cairns 2011). There are 27 described stylasterid genera, with 247 species world-wide (Cairns 2011). Fourteen genera and thirty three species are recorded from the Antarctic region, south of the Antarctic Front at 54°S (Cairns 1983, Cairns 1991) (Table 1, Map 1). There are no described stylasterids from within the Arctic Circle (Cairns 2011), and Southern Ocean diversity is comparatively higher than other oceans (e.g., only one species, Errina aspera, has been described from the Mediterranean). Stylasterids have been observed in Southern Ocean collections since the early 1800s (Stokes 1847) and the last biogeographic summary was published in 1983 (Cairns 1983). However, it is only in the past decade that modern remote video and sampling techniques have allowed us to glimpse images of them in their natural habitat. The Census of Antarctic Marine Life (CAML), in collaboration with the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research Marine Biodiversity Information Network (SCAR-MarBIN) conducted between 2005 and 2010, has provided new data on Antarctic biodiversity with new distribution records, in situ photographs, and environmental data to offer a greater insight than ever before into Antarctic benthic biogeography.

womeninthearcticandantarctic.ca — My career in marine biology started with an undergraduate placement in Hawaii, which extended to research in Panama, where my work on corals began. During my honours and PhD my research shifted to deep sea corals across four Antarctic field seasons and diving work in Patagonia.

womeninthearcticandantarctic.ca — I have been a part of the Antarctic science community for the last decade - it has been an incredible experience, Antarctica has become an integral part of my identity, and I am proud to be here - thank you for the opportunity to share some of my story with you.

utas.edu.au — International legal agreements could be used to protect Antarctica's increasingly important role in carbon sequestration, according to a new IMAS-led study. As Antarctic ice shelves, glaciers and sea-ice shrink due to climate change, algal blooms of phytoplankton thrive in the newly ice-free waters of the continental shelf, locking away CO2 as they die and sink through the water column.

Wiley - Global Change Biology — Precautionary conservation and cooperative global governance are needed to protect Antarctic blue carbon: the world's largest increasing natural form of carbon storage with high sequestration potential. As patterns of ice loss around Antarctica become more uniform, there is an underlying increase in carbon capture‐to‐storage‐to‐sequestration on the seafloor. The amount of carbon captured per unit area is increasing and the area available to blue carbon is also increasing. Carbon sequestration could further increase under moderate (+1°C) ocean warming, contrary to decreasing global blue carbon stocks elsewhere. For example, in warmer waters, mangroves and seagrasses are in decline and benthic organisms are close to their physiological limits, so a 1°C increase in water temperature could push them above their thermal tolerance (e.g. bleaching of coral reefs). In contrast, on the basis of past change and current research, we expect that Antarctic blue carbon could increase by orders of magnitude. The Antarctic seafloor is biophysically unique and the site of carbon sequestration, the benthos, faces less anthropogenic disturbance than any other ocean continental shelf environment. This isolation imparts both vulnerability to change, and an avenue to conserve one of the world's last biodiversity refuges. In economic terms, the value of Antarctic blue carbon is estimated at between £0.65 and £1.76 billion (~2.27 billion USD) for sequestered carbon in the benthos around the continental shelf. To balance biodiversity protection against society's economic objectives, this paper builds on a proposal incentivising protection by building a ‘non‐market framework’ via the 2015 Paris Agreement to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This could be connected and coordinated through the Antarctic Treaty System to promote and motivate member states to value Antarctic blue carbon and maintain scientific integrity and conservation for the positive societal values ingrained in the Antarctic Treaty System.

WIRED Magazine — Both polar regions are losing marine ice. Ice shelves are breaking up into giant icebergs, more glaciers are retreating and at faster rates, less sea surface is freezing and for shorter periods. Simply put, the north and south poles are becoming less white and more blue.

journals.plos.org — Antarctica is often associated with images of masculine figures battling against the blizzard. The pervasiveness of heroic white masculine leadership and exploration in Antarctica and, more broadly, in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine (STEMM) research cultures, has meant women have had lesser access to Antarctic research and fieldwork opportunities, with a marked increase since the 1980s.

Carbon Brief — A guest article from Dr David Barnes , a marine benthic ecologist at the British Antarctic Survey , and colleagues Chester Sands, Narissa Bax, Rachel Downey, Christoph Held, Oliver Hogg, Kirill Minin, Camille Moreau, Bernabé Moreno and Maria Lund Paulsen from the Antarctic Seabed Carbon Capture Change As global temperatures rise, the response from different parts of the climate system can amplify or dampen the pace of warming.