Drake Passage: notes for teachers

On-line quizzes     Background and activities     Life in the Antarctic    

You are here:   Drake Passage: notes for teachers

Drake Passage research cruises: overview

The Drake Passage cruises take place every year just before Christmas, lasting 2-3 weeks. Scientists onboard send daily e-mails with photos to the O4S 'Cruise News' pages (follow the Drake Passage link on the O4S Home Page, or see http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/o4s/cn/orc011.php).

As an annual event, the Drake Passage cruises provide a good opportunity for schools to study the Antarctic and the Southern Ocean. For this reason we are now developing on-line material to accompany the daily cruise e-mails and photos.

On-line activities in 'Cruise Quizzical'

In the list below URLs lead to pages that are already available online. More material will be available over the next few weeks.

• Crossword with words from the e-mails and background pages (on-line and print version).
  On-line: http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/o4s/qz/xw/xw002.php
  Print version: http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/o4s/qz/xw/cw_002.pdf
  Printed solution: http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/o4s/qz/xw/cw_002_solution.pdf
• Odd-one-out quiz: five quick questions that use photos to test knowledge about Antarctic animals
  http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/o4s/qz/quiz/quiz011.php
  Background information on the animals from links in Drake Passage 2011: Background:
  http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/o4s/cn/orc011/orc011_bg.php
  
• Foodweb quiz: placing Antarctic animals in foodwebs based on information in the background pages (on-line and print versions).
• How good are you at graphs? Step by step questions and answers that show how to read graphs of environmental data.
• Drake passage word searches (one for 'Life in the Antarctic' and one for 'Seasons and Climate').
• FAQ: questions related to the cruises and the Antarctic generally.
• Crossword competition (book prize for the winner, with the winning crossword published on line).

Background information with activity suggestions

Background information on climate, seasons, oceanography and ecology of the Antarctic will be available from the cruise background pages. The material covers two main themes:'Life in the Antarctic' and 'Seasons and Climate'.

Teacher notes for each theme will include activity suggestions, discussion topics, questions for use in work sheets, and illustrated background material based on photos from current and previous research cruises. The background will be available both on-line and in PDF format for printing.

Life in the Antarctic

Life in the Antarctic looks at the feeding relationship and reproductive strategies of key Antarctic species. NOTE: Background information on the different plants and animals in the Antarctic food web will be available by the time the next Drake Passage cruise leaves Rothera for Stanley in the Falkland Islands on Monday 6th December.

Activity suggestion

Using photos and background information on predator/prey relationships from the Drake Passage web pages, students can create food webs for single species (Antarctic Krill, blue whale, giant petrel, emperor penguin, orca, etc.). This may be followed by a discussion (or individual work), which considers the questions below. The result will allow students to combine the individual species food webs into an overall food web for the whole Antarctic ecosystem.

Key questions to consider

These could be discussed in class, or used as a guide for work in groups or individually.

Krill (an Antarctic keystone species)

• How important are krill in the Antarctic ecosystem?
• Which Antarctic animals depend on krill for survival - either because they eat krill, or because their prey animals eat krill?
• There is a commercial fishery for krill in the Southern Ocean. Recently there has been talk of increasing the quotas for this fishing fleet. What impact could that have on other animals in the Antarctic?

Apex predators

Top predators are also called apex predators because of their place at the 'apex' (top point) of the food pyramid. They are few in number compared with animals lower down in the food chain. Adult apex predators have few enemies, although their young may sometimes be prey for other apex predators.

• Which animals are the top ('apex') predators in the Antarctic ecosystem?
• What do they eat? Do they specialise in any particular food?
• Do any of these have their own predators at any stage in their life?
• Adult blue whales have few enemies, but they are not apex predators. Can you think why?

Trophic levels

• How many links are there between orcas and phytoplankton (via the shortest route)?
• How many links from phytoplankton to skuas?
• How many links from blue whales to phytoplankton?
• Where do humans fit in the foodweb?

Reproductive strategies

• How many eggs do the different penguins lay in one year? (Answer: 1)
• How many eggs do South Polar skuas and Southern giant petrels lay (Answer: 1-2)
• How many eggs can a krill lay at one time? (Answer: Up to 10,000)
• What are the differences in how the birds and the krill look after their young?
• What are the advantages of the different strategies adopted by these birds and by the krill?
• How does this compare with the time it takes for orcas, sperm whales, and blue whales to carry and rear their young?
• Are there any links between the number of young and any of the following:
  • the size of the adult animal, and their offspring,
  • the amount of food the animal and its offspring will need to stay alive,
  • the risk of being eaten by a predator (both for the young and their parents),
  • the care the parents give to their young while they are growing up?

Seasons and climate

Activity ideas and discussion items will follow when the quizzes become available in 'Cruize Quizzical'

Last update: 19 December 2010

Contact: o4s@noc.soton.ac.uk