UCT Sustainability and the SDGs 2022 - Magazine - Page 33
Research and Innovation
Managing the impact of the Benguela current
losing breath
Across the world’s oceans, there are places especially abundant
in nutrients and life. They cover around 1% of the ocean but
produce a disproportionate number of 昀椀sh: 20% of global marine
昀椀sh catches. The Benguela Upwelling System is one such place.
But it tends to have unpredictable severe low-oxygen conditions,
When the study started,
dumping of plastics at sea was
still legal, and lax controls on
plastic converters resulted in
huge numbers of industrial pellets
reaching the sea. Since then,
numerous initiatives have been
implemented to reduce plastic
leakage and clean up plastics in
the environment. For the seabirds
in the South Atlantic, these
measures appear to have more or
less balanced the increase in the
amount of plastic now
being produced.
– Emeritus Professor Peter Ryan,
Fitzpatrick Institute of
African Ornithology.
66 - Sustainability and the SDGs 2024
which are life-threatening to sea creatures and livelihoodthreatening to local people. Researchers at UCT’s Marine and
Antarctic Research Centre for Innovation and Sustainability
(UCT-MARiS), and their collaborators, are 昀椀guring out what’s
causing these conditions and how to manage them.
Located off the southwest coast of Africa, the Benguela
Upwelling System is one of the most fertile ocean regions
globally and of massive socioeconomic importance to South
Africa, Namibia and Angola.
In 2024, this research was further expanded as
the research team received funding from Schmidt
Sciences to work on a project investigating oxygen
and biogeochemical dynamics along the west African
margin. This project, which is part of Schmidt’s Ocean
Biogeochemistry Virtual Institute (OBVI) and includes
substantial observational and modelling efforts,
expands the focus to the whole South Atlantic, allowing
researchers to also investigate the impact of the
warming open ocean on the Benguela ecosystems, and
the consequences of what’s happening at the coast –
including the loss of oxygen – on the Atlantic basin.
The UCT research team, based in UCT’s Department of
Oceanography and UCT-MARiS, is working to observe,
understand and model the conditions that lead to low-oxygen
loads typically are found in petrels, which can store plastics
events, with the goal of being able to predict them so that
in their stomachs for weeks or months.
those reliant on the southern Benguela for income and
In 2024, a study by the UCT team showed that the amount
sustenance can better prepare for when they happen.
of plastic in petrels breeding at Inaccessible Island in the
central South Atlantic Ocean has remained constant since
Seabirds key to measuring plastic pollution at sea
the 1980s. Since global plastic production has increased
Researchers at UCT’s Fitzpatrick Institute of Africa
more than four-fold over the decades, the failure to detect
Ornithology have for decades been tracking plastic pollution
an increase in plastic in petrels indicates that efforts to limit
in oceans through the study of seabirds, particularly petrels.
waste plastic entering the environment have been at least
Seabirds frequently consume these plastic fragments directly
partly successful, reducing the proportion of plastic leaking
or in their food. Among seabirds, the highest ingested plastic
into the sea over this period.
Sustainability and the SDGs 2024 – 67
