Details

Carbon Uptake and Seasonal Traits of Antarctic Remineralisation Depth (CUSTARD) is a £1.8 million, four-year (2018-2022) research project funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).Six different UK-based organisations are directly involved in research for CUSTARD:

• National Oceanography Centre (NOC)
• NERC British Antarctic Survey (BAS)
• University of Southampton
• University of Oxford
• Plymouth University
• University of East Anglia (UEA)

The main aim of the CUSTARD project is to quantify the seasonal drivers of carbon fluxes in a region of the Southern Ocean upper limb, and estimate how long different quantities of carbon are kept out of the atmosphere based on the water flow routes at the observed remineralisation depths. Please visit the CUSTARD web page for more information. 

CUSTARD is one of three projects funded as part of the Role of the Southern Ocean in the Earth System (RoSES) programme, also known as the Southern Ocean programme. Please see the RoSES project documentfor more information on the wider programme and the research projects associated with it.

The upper limb of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) represents an important junction in the marine carbon cycle, as the fate of carbon fixed by surface phytoplankton will differ according to how deep it penetrates before being remineralised. If shallow remineralisation occurs, carbon will follow the upper limb circulation and upwell further north, escaping into the atmosphere within decades. On the other hand, deep remineralisation will result in carbon entering the lower limb circulation, with the potential of being retained in the ocean for hundreds of years. Seasonality in plankton dynamics play an important role in remineralisation depth, and CUSTARD aims to resolve all factors contributing to the carbon export out of the region. 

All the observational data from the project is collected at and south of the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) Global Southern Ocean Array, located south-west of Chile. Data collection activities span from November 2018 to January 2020, and include three cruises, four glider missions, and one mooring. All cruises depart from and return to Punta Arenas (Chile). Cruise activities include deployments and recovery of gliders and a mooring, Conductivity, Temperature and Depth (CTD), trace metal clean GoFlo bottle sampling, Red Camera Frame, Marine Snow Catcher and Underwater Vision Profiler deployments, as well as laboratory incubations with sea water samples. See cruise details below: