Schröder Henning henning.schroeder@awi.de 0000-0003-3419-9946 Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven AWI https://www.awi.de/ https://ror.org/032e6b942 Held Christoph Christoph.Held@awi.de 0000-0001-8854-3234 Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven AWI https://www.awi.de/ https://ror.org/032e6b942 Bornemann Horst horst.bornemann@awi.de https://www.awi.de/en/about-us/organisation/staff/single-view/horst-bornemann.html 0000-0002-0230-1881 Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven AWI https://www.awi.de/ https://ror.org/032e6b942 2026 Under water video footage from Weddell seal NEU2024_wed_a_m_05_1 taken by seal mounted cameras during expedition ANT-Land_2024_SEAEIS (NEU2024) dataset bundled publication https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.993218 2026-04-22T13:12:44 SEAls and cryobenthic communities at the Ekström Ice Shelf (SEAEIS) applies biologging technologies for studying the foraging ecology of Weddell seals with a direct link to the investigation of cryobenthic invertebrate communities beneath the Ekström Ice Shelf at Atka Bay. Incidences of cryobenthic communities beneath ice shelves are rare and recent discoveries. Combined seal- and ROV-borne imagery and novel sampling technologies led to the discovery of a cryobenthic isopod community (Antarcturus cf. spinacoronatus Schultz 1978), being attached head-down to the underside of floating shelf ice at Drescher Inlet (Riiser-Larsen Ice Shelf) at depths of around 80-150 m (Watanabe et al. 2006; Bornemann et al. 2016). These "hanging gardens" may represent a food horizon where seals could benefit from a local hotspot of high biologic activity. The presence of isopod aggregations explained a multimodal distribution of the seals' dive depths known from earlier investigations at Drescher Inlet, and could probably also be indicative for increased abundances of seals in Areas of Ecological Significance (AES) at the interface between shelf and sea ice. However, the question whether the aforementioned findings are representative for the far-ranging high Antarctic ice shelves or even unique remains open, and factors contributing to AES and their stability over time are largely unexplored. Therefore, we proposed a synoptic field study at Atka Bay (Neumayer Station III), where earlier deployments of satellite-linked data loggers also showed a mode in the distribution of bottom times spent at water depths corresponding to the underside of the floating shelf ice, thus supporting the hypothesis of ice shelf associated foraging. For details and results on the campaign ANT-Land_2024_SEAEIS (NEU2024) see Held et al. 2026. Held Christoph Christoph.Held@awi.de 0000-0001-8854-3234 Schröder Henning henning.schroeder@awi.de 0000-0003-3419-9946 Bornemann Horst horst.bornemann@awi.de https://www.awi.de/en/about-us/organisation/staff/single-view/horst-bornemann.html 0000-0002-0230-1881 2026 Seals and cryo-benthic communities at the Ekström Ice Shelf (SEAEIS) report In: Regnery J, Matz T, Köhler P & Wesche C. Expeditions to Antarctica: ANT-Land 2024/25 NEUMAYER STATION III, Kohnen Station and Field Campaigns Berichte zur Polar- und Meeresforschung = Reports on Polar and Marine Research https://doi.org/10.57738/bzpm_0807_2026 121-151 Bornemann Horst horst.bornemann@awi.de https://www.awi.de/en/about-us/organisation/staff/single-view/horst-bornemann.html 0000-0002-0230-1881 Held Christoph Christoph.Held@awi.de 0000-0001-8854-3234 Nachtsheim Dominik A d.nachtsheim@outlook.de 0000-0002-1010-3527 Owsianowski Nils nils.owsianowski@awi.de https://www.awi.de/en/about-us/organisation/staff/single-view/nils-owsianowski.html 0000-0003-4104-4926 Richter Claudio Claudio.Richter@awi.de https://www.awi.de/en/about-us/organisation/staff/single-view/claudio-richter.html 0000-0002-8182-6896 Steinmetz Richard richard.steinmetz@awi.de https://www.awi.de/en/about-us/organisation/staff/single-view/richard-steinmetz.html 2016 Seal research at the Drescher Inlet (SEADI) report in: Schröder, M (ed.) The Expedition PS96 of the Research Vessel POLARSTERN to the southern Weddell Sea in 2015/2016. Berichte zur Polar- und Meeresforschung = Reports on polar and marine research, Bremerhaven, Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung, 700, 148 pp https://doi.org/10.2312/BzPM_0700_2016 116-129 Watanabe Yuuki yuuki@ori.u-tokyo.ac.jp 0000-0001-9731-1769 Bornemann Horst horst.bornemann@awi.de https://www.awi.de/en/about-us/organisation/staff/single-view/horst-bornemann.html 0000-0002-0230-1881 Liebsch Nikolai S n.liebsch@swansea.ac.uk Plötz Joachim Sato Katsufumi 0000-0002-7557-4784 Naito Yasuhiko Miyazaki Nobuyuki 2006 Seal-mounted cameras detect invertebrate fauna on the underside of an Antarctic ice shelf Marine Ecology Progress Series 309 https://doi.org/10.3354/meps309297 297-300 -8.20058 -8.20058 -70.53106000000001 -70.53106000000001 -8.20058 -70.53106000000001 2024-12-04T21:38:05 2024-12-05T09:38:04 profile series MMT Marine Mammal Tracking hdl:10013/epic.44489.d001 Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven AWI https://www.awi.de/ https://ror.org/032e6b942 SEAEIS Seals and cryobenthic communities at the Ekström Ice Shelf Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven AWI https://www.awi.de/ https://ror.org/032e6b942 5 CC-BY-4.0 Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ avi | Video, under water | VIDEO water | ass | Hypertext Markup Language | HTML | Dive, time depth profile | DTDP | Temperature, water | Temp | on = 1, off = 0 | Video, on/of | DVS | Acceleration X Axis | AX | Acceleration Y Axis | AY | Acceleration Z Axis | AZ Animal-borne underwater video footage Leptonychotes weddellii Weddell seal param51217 param514838 param543605 param545059 param545060 param545061 param545162 param717 pi777 author10400 author26305 author29001 author30093 author34995 author35083 author35084 author35085 author35352 author38742 author55997 author56683 author777 geocode1599 geocode1600 geocode1601 inst32 journal10811 journal16572 license21 project4053 project4846 ref133725 ref139659 ref30406 term68425 term68426 term76222 topotype5