Argentina–Chile National Geographic Pristine Seas Expedition To The Antarctic Peninsula - Deep Sea Cam Data

In January 2019, the governments of Chile and Argentina, in collaboration with National Geographic Pristine Seas, organized an expedition to the Antarctic Peninsula, with the aim to provide political, scientific, and communication support, at a global scale, to the Marine Protected Area proposal for the Antarctic Peninsula-South Scotia Arc (Domain 1 MPA or D1MPA) that was put forward jointly by the two countries in October 2018. To this end, they set out to explore the ecosystems of the continental shelf along the WAP and associated islands using National Geographic’s deep-sea cameras to capture high quality imagery of areas of the Antarctic sea floor and the associated fauna, which have been comparatively less well explored. This bi-national expedition was conducted on the Chilean Navy vessel, the OPV-83 Marinero Fuentealba, with scientists from both countries national Antarctic Institutes. In order to study the continental shelf faunal biodiversity of Antarctica , baited cameras were deployed at 20 locations along ~ 500 km of the Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) at depths from 90 to 797 m.