U.S. cancels or curtails half of its Antarctic research projects

Marine biologist Michelle Shero had every reason to expect this to be a better year on the Antarctic ice. Since receiving a 5-year, $1.1 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 2019 to study the reproductive success of Weddell seals in McMurdo Sound, Shero has been sent down for just one, truncated field season. But in January NSF had assured Shero that her team would be deployed in October for a full 4 months, and by June she had packed up and shipped out some $200,000 in equipment and supplies. So Shero, a tenure-track assistant scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, was stunned when her program manager told her in July that this season, too, was over before it started. There weren’t enough beds at NSF’s McMurdo Station to accommodate her team of five, the minimal crew needed to safely handle animals that can weigh up to 500 kilograms. Shero isn’t the only NSF-funded Antarctic scientist saying goodbye to another planned field season. This summer NSF decided to cancel or curtail 67—more than half—of the 131 projects and activities funded for the 2023–24 austral summer after concluding it couldn’t provide them with the necessary logistical support. The housing shortage is part of a triad of factors generating a perfect storm that is battering the United States Antarctic Program (USAP), long regarded as the best in the world. One element, the COVID-19 pandemic, shut down most research for 2 years and the...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news