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Women In Polar Science

Narissa Bax, PhD

South Atlantic Environmental Research Institute (SAERI) (Falkland Islands); Centre for Marinesocioecology, Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (Australia)

Narissa sits at a rocky beach at Cow Point on Sea Lion Island, East Falklands, with a blue woolly hat that will be stolen off her head the next day by a striated caracara (Phalcoboenus australis), an inquisitive and globally threatened bird of prey affectionately known as a 'Johnny Rook' in the Falkland Islands. (c) Jane Younger

Narissa sits at a rocky beach at Cow Point on Sea Lion Island, East Falklands, with a blue woolly hat that will be stolen off her head the next day by a striated caracara (Phalcoboenus australis), an inquisitive and globally threatened bird of prey affectionately known as a 'Johnny Rook' in the Falkland Islands. (c) Jane Younger

What’s the work that you do?

My work supports the coordination and development of marine and coastal environmental management. I also maintain a research agenda focused on seafloor blue carbon and marine exploration. Including in the Falkland Islands mesophotic zone (from 30 – 150 meters) – where we recorded the presence of stylasterid (lace) coral gardens and rhodolith beds (coralline algae nodules) below 40 m during exploratory surveys in 2021. A focus on sampling in unexplored mesophotic habitats informs on threats and vulnerability across a vast area (c. 50,000 km² of the Falklands Conservation Zone) that encompasses multiple species exposed to various environmental gradients.

What keeps you going?

Curiosity keeps me going, there is so much to discover about the world and working in Antarctica and the sub-Antarctic – it feels like the edge of everything, exploring places that no one has ever seen before. Exploration is not a solo endeavour, so another thing that really keeps me going are the incredible people. It is a wonderful thing to have worked on ships surrounded by knowledge and skill-sets finely tuned to life at sea. To continue learning from such a diverse global network since my very first Antarctic voyage 2009/10 is something I feel incredibly grateful for.

What’s your message to the world?

There is a pervasive idea that, because places like the sub-Antarctic are isolated ‘and comparatively pristine’ (especially out of sight habitats like the deep sub-Antarctic seafloor), they are unimpacted by humans. Sadly, this is not the case given the typically slow growth rates, endemism and economic interest in these ecosystems and the compounding consequences of climate change. I hope that society comes to collectively realise this, whilst we still have wonderful biodiverse ecosystems such as coral gardens on the seafloor. Ultimately these deep safe havens are buffering humanity from climate change, storing and sequestering carbon, locking it away outside of the carbon cycle. Whilst animals such as corals hold evidence of the past climate in their skeletons and offer lessons from a time when the oceans were more acidic, less oxygenated and some ecosystems were responding (or being lost), like they are today.

Organisation: South Atlantic Environmental Research Institute (SAERI) (Falkland Islands); Centre for Marinesocioecology, Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (Australia)

Nationality: New Zealand New Zealand

Disciplines:

Conservation management Seafloor ecology

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We are grateful to The Ocean Foundation for acting as our fiscal sponsor in the US, the Curtis and Edith Munson Foundation for sponsoring this project, and the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) for supporting us.