Monitoring krill in the Ross Sea MPA

The ROSSKRILL project gave the opportunity to perform a large-scale acoustic survey in western Ross Sea, after a time gap of many years lasting since 2004. In the meanwhile, this area saw the establishment of the largest MPA in the world, and it will be very interesting to compare recent results with the past ones. The survey was performed in January 2022 on board R/V Laura Bassi, and during the survey, an autonomous scientific echo sounder on the top edge of the “Mooring B” of the Ross Sea Marine Observatory was installed. The project will give us reliable information on abundance and spatial distribution of the pelagic species inhabiting the ecosystem at these latitudes, on krill ecology and his environmental role. The autonomous echo sounder will work all year long, observing and measuring for the first time the behaviour of the organisms at the variation of light intensity and ice coverage.