Chilean scientists investigating the organisms in one of the world’s most remote places urged the region’s governments to step up efforts to combat climate change.
One recent expedition postponed by a year due to the coronavirus pandemic tried to examine organisms of pest and their effects on climate change.
Scientists aboard the oceanographic research vessel Cabo de Hornos, which passes through summit-dotted straits, past Glaciers and wobbling birds, have focused on water which has a lower acidity and salt and calcium content than other oceans and seas, particularly in its shallowest parts.
Scientists believe the conditions in water are likely to develop elsewhere in the world in the next few decades, as the effects of climate change intensify.
“I think we’re the voice of what nature cannot say,” said Wilson Castillo, a biochemistry student who was the youngest participant at 24.
The scientific mission focused particularly on red tides, harmful algae blooms which can turn the sea red.
A second apparatus was also used to take soil samples, sometimes at a depth of more than 300 metres.
Hucke fears that that region could one day “one of the last bastions of biodiversity on Earth.”
_(cropped).jpg)
