Catherine Louise Waller- PhD
- Lecturer at University of Hull
Catherine Louise Waller
- PhD
- Lecturer at University of Hull
About
31
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Introduction
Current institution
Publications
Publications (31)
It was thought that the Southern Ocean was relatively free of microplastic contamination; however, recent studies and citizen science projects in the Southern Ocean have reported microplastics in deep-sea sediments and surface waters. Here we reviewed available information on microplastics (including macroplastics as a source of microplastics) in t...
Aim
To describe the distribution of biodiversity and biogeographical patterns of intertidal organisms in southern temperate and polar waters. We hypothesized that there would be differences in community structure between the Antarctic, which is most affected by ice, and the sub‐Antarctic and other neighbouring regions. We also hypothesized that raf...
The Arctic is undergoing dramatic changes, including an unprecedented decline in sea ice. Previous studies have shown the severe structuring impact of sea ice scour upon polar intertidal communities. A dramatic example of the influence of Arctic sea ice is the highly depauperate intertidal of Cambridge Bay (Iqaluktuuttiaq) on Victoria Island, Nunav...
Rivers are primary vectors of plastic debris to oceans, but sources, transport mechanisms, and fate of fluvial microplastics (<5 mm) remain poorly understood, impeding accurate predictions of microplastic flux, ecological risk and socio-economic impacts. We report on microplastic concentrations, characteristics and dynamics in the Mekong River, one...
The benthic community around Antarctica is diverse and highly endemic. These cold-adapted species are under threat from local and global drivers, including warming, acidification and changes to the cryosphere. In this Review, we summarize observed, experimental and modelled Antarctic benthic ecological change. Warming, glacial melt and retreat, and...
Rivers are the major conveyor of plastics to the marine environment, but the mechanisms that impact microplastic (<5 mm) aquatic transport, and thus govern fate are largely unknown. This prevents progress in understanding microplastic dynamics and identifying zones of high accumulation, along with taking representative environmental samples and dev...
In 2017, the United Nations proclaimed a Decade of
Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (hereafter
referred to as the UN Ocean Decade) from 2021 until
2030 to support efforts to reverse the cycle of decline in
ocean health. To achieve this ambitious goal, this initiative
aims to gather ocean stakeholders worldwide behind a
common framework tha...
The polar plastics research community have recommended the spatial coverage of microplastic investigations in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean be increased. Presented here is a baseline estimate of microplastics in the nearshore waters of South Georgia, the first in situ study of the north-east coast of the island. Our results show that the microp...
Rivers are the major conveyor of plastics to the marine environment, but the mechanisms that impact microplastic (< 5mm) transport, and thus govern fate of the material in the environment, are largely unknown. This prevents progress in understanding microplastic dynamics and identifying zones of high accumulation, as well as curtailing the evolutio...
Local drivers are human activities or processes that occur in specific locations, and cause physical or ecological change at the local or regional scale. Here, we consider marine and land-derived pollution, non-indigenous species, tourism and other human visits, exploitation of marine resources, recovery of marine mammals, and coastal change as a r...
Knowledge of life on the Southern Ocean seafloor has substantially grown since the beginning of this century with increasing ship-based surveys and regular monitoring sites, new technologies and greatly enhanced data sharing. However, seafloor habitats and their communities exhibit high spatial variability and heterogeneity that challenges the way...
There is evidence that microplastic (MP) pollution can negatively influence coral health; however, mechanisms are unknown and most studies have used MP exposure concentrations that are considerably higher than current environmental conditions. Furthermore, whether MP exposure influences coral susceptibility to other stressors such as ocean warming...
The manuscript assesses the current and expected future global drivers of Southern Ocean (SO) ecosystems. Atmospheric ozone depletion over the Antarctic since the 1970s, has been a key driver, resulting in springtime cooling of the stratosphere and intensification of the polar vortex, increasing the frequency of positive phases of the Southern Annu...
Antarctic shallow coastal marine communities were long thought to be isolated from their nearest neighbours by hundreds of kilometres of deep ocean and the Antarctic circumpolar current. the discovery of non-native kelp washed up on Antarctic beaches led us to question the permeability of these barriers to species dispersal. According to the litera...
Plastics in the Southern Ocean - Volume 30 Issue 5 - Catherine L. Waller, Kevin A. Hughes
The South Orkney Islands Southern Shelf (SOISS) Marine Protected Area (MPA) was the first MPA to be designated entirely within the high seas and is managed under the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR). To assist with research and monitoring of the MPA, an international expedition ('SO-AntEco') was undertak...
The South Orkney Islands are a small archipelago located in the Southern Ocean, 375 miles north-east of the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. In 2009, the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) established the South Orkney Islands Southern Shelf Marine Protected Area (SOISS MPA), the first MPA located entirely...
Many Antarctic marine invertebrates are considered to be highly stenothermal, subjected to loss of functionality at increased temperatures and so at high risk of mortality in a rapidly warming environment. The bivalve Laternula elliptica is often used as a model taxon to test these theories. Here, we report the first instance L. elliptica from an i...
For many years, hard coastal defences made from various different materials have been used to protect coastal areas and these structures provide additional space for colonisation by intertidal communities. However, preliminary results have shown that community structure varies between the different materials used for coastal defences and the questi...
Despite the general view that the Antarctic intertidal conditions are too extreme to support obvious signs of macrofaunal life, recent studies have shown that intertidal communities can survive over annual cycles. The current study investigates distribution of taxa within a boulder cobble matrix, beneath the outer, scoured surface of the intertidal...
The human-assisted establishment of two non-native predatory carabid beetles (Merizodus soledadinus (Guerin-Ménéville), Trechisibus antarcticus (Dejean)) on the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia occurred 30–50 years ago, but the distribution of these species has
never been the subject of regular monitoring, and was last assessed in the mid-1990...
Despite being one of the most intensely studied habitat types worldwide, the intertidal region around Antarctica has received
little more than superficial study. Despite this, the first detailed study of a single locality on the Antarctic Peninsula
reported previously unanticipated levels of species richness, biomass and diversity in cryptic intert...
Heat shock proteins (HSPs) are a family of genes classically used to measure levels of organism stress. We have previously identified two HSP70 genes (HSP70A and HSP70B) in sub-tidal populations of the Antarctic limpet (Nacella concinna). These genes are up-regulated in response to increased seawater temperatures of 15 degrees C or more during acut...
Recent studies have revealed a previously unanticipated level of biodiversity present in the Antarctic littoral. Here, we report research on the ecophysiological strategies adopted by intertidal species that permit them to survive in this environment, presenting cold-tolerance data for the widest range of invertebrates published to date from the An...
Abstract We report the composition of terrestrial, intertidal and shallow sublittoral faunal communities at sites around Rothera Research Station, Adelaide Island, Antarctic Peninsula. We examined primary hypotheses that the marine environment will have considerably higher species richness, biomass and abundance than the terrestrial, and that both...
Benthic communities in several fjords and sheltered bays of the north coast of South Georgia Island were examined using SCUBA
and shore sampling in November 2004. It is one of the most northerly islands within the Polar Front and its well studied,
terrestrial biota is described as sub Antarctic. The intertidal and subtidal zones and their fauna are...
Heat shock proteins (HSPs) are a family of genes classically used to measure levels of organism stress. We have previously identified two HSP70 genes (HSP70A and HSP70B) in sub-tidal populations of the Antarctic limpet (Nacella concinna). These genes are up-regulated in response to increased seawater temperatures of 15°C or more during acute heat s...
