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Global warming might cause Antarctic invasion
With the waters around Antarctica changing, due to global warming, scientists think it possible that there will be an invasion of species that will be a threat to the existing ecosystems.
Different species, that previously could not possibly survive in the cold waters around Antarctica, could take advantage of the warming waters and feast on the species that are at home there. Predatory giant crabs, other fish and even sharks could return and create havoc, even bringing species to the brink of extinction.
Dr Richard Aronson, a paleobiologist at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, in Alabama, said: "Antarctic marine communities are functionally Paleozoic [the geological period between around 230 million and 600 million years ago]. They look like primeval communities from hundreds of millions of years ago because modern predators - crabs and fish - are missing."
Dr Sven Thatje of the National Oceanography Centre, in Southampton, said: "The crabs are on the doorstep. They are sitting in deep water, and only a couple of hundred metres of depth now separate them from the slightly cooler shallow water in the Antarctic shelf environment."
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