Southern discomfort

The ice breaker and research vessel Polarstern, run by the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) on a busy schedule making the most of the summer season at each pole, is often involved in good causes, such as collecting data concerning the impact of climate change (see Curr. Biol. (2008) 18, R181). In January, however, she sailed straight into a row in which several NGOs and the German ministry of the environment accused the researchers on board of acting against international conventions and harming the environment, while the research ministry upheld its support for the controversial project. The debate erupted over the iron fertilization project Lohafex, which chancellor Angela Merkel and the Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh had agreed when they met in 2007. Loha is the Hindi word for iron, and fex stands for fertilization experiment. Recent research has shown that the availability of nutrients in the Southern Ocean all around Antarctica is limiting the biomass production and hence also the ocean’s capacity for carbon sequestration. Iron has turned out to be the limiting factor, and the release of icebergs from the Antarctic ice shield has emerged as a natural News focus