With ice all around, three scientists from the 2006 Balleny Islands expedition became the first people ever to dive in the astonishingly bleak Balleny Islands. Above water, the Ballenys are just ice and rock, too far south for any plants, even grasses. Awed by the amount of life found under the water, marine ecologist Rebecca McLeod explains the sensations of that first dive.

“The first thing that struck me, well apart from the pain associated with plunging into –1oC water, were the colours. On land the Ballenys are a wild mass of black and white, but as we descended down the anchor line, our torches showed a world of intense colour.”

The Balleny Islands lie over 2000 kilometres south of New Zealand, a little to the north-west of the mouth of the Ross Sea and only a couple of hundred kilometres off the coast of Antarctica. The chain is oriented north-west to south-east between 66º 15’S–67º 10’S, and 16º 15’E–164º 45’E. Claimed by New Zealand as part of the Ross Dependency, the area is governed through the Antarctic Treaty System.

The Ross Sea is one of the most biologically productive regions in the Southern Ocean and has an estimated annual production four times higher than the global ocean average. Initial research on the waters surrounding the Balleny Islands suggests that the region may be a particularly important part of the larger Ross Sea ecosystem—an ecological hot-spot.

Since 2000, New Zealand has stated its intention to propose a high-seas Marine Protected Area (MPA) that includes the Balleny Islands and the waters around them. The archipelago straddles the Antarctic Circle and contains several habitats which are representative of the Antarctic region, from the terrestrial and coastal zone of the islands to the marginal ice zone and seamounts.

Although conservation and scientific study are identified in the Treaty and the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), New Zealand’s quest to establish the Balleny Islands as the Antarctic’s first high-seas MPA involves several challenges.

“The logistics in trying to establish an MPA have been a challenge. Because the Antarctic Treaty and CCAMLR overlap in some ways and don’t clearly identify authority in others, it’s been hard for MPA proposals to gain traction,” says Ben Sharp, a consultant to the Ministry of Fisheries. “Plus, because the Balleny Islands are incredibly isolated, building a scientific case about the need for their protection has been an arduous undertaking.”

Despite limited scientific evidence, however, scientists who have ventured into the area have found signs of a biological treasure trove, including the discovery of undescribed stylasterine corals, anemones, polychaetes and bryozoans—and that’s just some of the larger bottom-dwelling invertebrates.

The area also appears to be a nursery both on land and in the sea. Evidence indicates that the waters are essential habitat for both juvenile toothfish and krill. As the only islands at that latitude for thousands of kilometres in either direction, the 160-kilometre chain of islands provides resting and breeding habitat for a number of seabird species and three seal species. The region is also the site of one of only four deep-ocean polynyas in the Antarctic—locations where prevailing ocean currents ensure that the water remains ice-free even through the winter. The open waters found in this polynya provide important foraging opportunities for predators.

Sharp adds, “Several times New Zealand has gone to CCAMLR and Antarctic Treaty meetings and advocated protection of the Balleny Islands on the basis of its uniqueness and nearly pristine natural environment. But we may have been neglecting what I think is actually the most persuasive argument for their protection, namely that the region appears to be a nursery for various species that are important in the wider ecosystem. Other countries have been guardedly supportive of our case, for example in 2001 CCAMLR asked for more work to be done to explore appropriate measures of protection for marine areas. It also prohibited toothfishing within 10 nautical miles of the Balleny Islands. Still, New Zealand’s proposals weren’t receiving consensus support and work to develop a process for designating marine protection within the Antarctic Treaty System continued to be slow going.”