The Antarctic Ecosystem - Antarctic (Southern) Ocean

The Antarctic Ecosystem Facts and Figures
The Open Door Web Site

There are six different types of seals in Antarctica. Five species of seal, including the elephant seal and the crabeater seal, depend mainly on squid for their food. The most vicious. carnivorous seal is the leopard seal, which is a predator of penguins which feed in the Antarctic waters. Most species of whales, including the blue whale, are filter feeders. One exception is the killer whale, one type of which can be found in the Antarctic. Killer whales often hunt in packs and have even been known to attack other species of whales.

The small areas of Antarctica which are not covered with snow in the summer become covered by mosses and lichens. There are over 400 species of lichens found in Antarctica. These plants spend the winter under ice, sometimes as resistant spores, and grow rapidly in the summer months. There are only four species of flowering plants in Antarctica, all four of them grasses. The only totally terrestrial animals are small invertebrates. The largest of these is a wingless fly which measures just a few millimetres in length.

Many animals migrate to Antarctica for the summer. The Arctic tern makes its 9000km journey from the Arctic to the Antarctic each year. Many of the whales migrate southwards when the krill is abundant.

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