The Australian Antarctic Division will coordinate four science campaigns over the next three seasons, with the KaKE krill campaign set for 2027/28 and the Marginal Ice Zone voyage scheduled for 2028/29. The plan was outlined at the biennial Australian Antarctic Research Conference in Hobart, which drew 400 researchers from around the globe.
Dr Patricia Miloslavich, who leads the division's Antarctic Monitoring Program, told the conference that between 1990 and 2026 four ships made 379 voyages, travelled nearly 2.5 million kilometres and collected 137 million measurements. The ships were the Australian Antarctic Program's Aurora Australis and RSV Nuyina, the French program's l'Astrolabe and the CSIRO's RV Investigator.
Aurora Australis data from 1991 to 2020 showed close correlation with global climate data from the UN's World Meteorological Organisation and increasing warm anomalies over that period. Air temperatures increased both north and south of 50°S, roughly the boundary between Antarctic and mid-latitude climates. Sea surface temperatures increased significantly only north of 50°S, which Dr Miloslavich described as the delayed appearance of human-caused climate change signals in the ocean around Antarctica.
Ship data shows warming and a shift to smaller zooplankton
The Continuous Plankton Recorder, towed behind ships, samples plankton on a silk ribbon. The survey began in 1931 and was introduced to the Southern Ocean by the Australian Antarctic Division in 1991. According to Dr Miloslavich, the data show a shift towards smaller zooplankton, some species moving further south, and a decline in pteropods in some locations.
Ship design has changed how specimens are collected. Aurora Australis used nets that destroyed delicate creatures; RSV Nuyina uses a wet well. On the Denman Marine Voyage in 2025, the wet well brought in a pteropod known as a sea butterfly, or clio pyramidata, intact enough for laboratory study.
Underway data is collected even when Nuyina is on resupply. Dr Miloslavich said this atmospheric and oceanographic data is key for the Bureau of Meteorology, feeding into the national weather model ACCESS and global climate models.
Four campaigns link Australian science to Antarctica InSync
Dr Miloslavich outlined four strategic campaigns coming up in the next three years. On the continent, work continues on the Million Year Ice Core project and the East Antarctic traverse from Casey to the project site. In the ocean, the KaKE campaign in 2027/28 will assess the krill-based ecosystem in the Mawson region. The Marginal Ice Zone voyage in 2028/29 will study changing sea ice conditions at the September maximum, a period that has seen very few scientific expeditions in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean.
These campaigns feed into Antarctica InSync, a program endorsed by the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research and the Council of Managers of National Antarctic Programs. Antarctica InSync will coordinate synchronized observations of ice, ocean, atmosphere, climate and ecosystems across the continent in 2027/28 and 2028/29.
A related voyage, ECCO, is scheduled for 2029/30 and builds on KaKE. It will add data to the design of Marine Protected Areas in East Antarctica and support krill biomass assessments for the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources.
September is the season to ask about
The conference is expected to run again in 2028. A traveller planning around science has a clear marker: the MIZ voyage is scheduled for the month of maximum sea ice, when very few expeditions have gathered data in the region. A useful question for an operator: does the planned voyage contribute to underway data collection of the kind described at the conference?