“The Southern Ocean has managed to protect all of us from some of the most extreme impacts of climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide emissions and the heat generated by these emissions through the greenhouse effect. But this protection comes at a cost to the natural ecosystems of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean,” says Ryan-Keogh.

During his TEDx Johannesburg talk titled “A changing Southern Ocean: The impact of climate change”, Ryan-Keogh explained that 26 years of data revealed that the phytoplankton in the Southern Ocean was becoming more iron-stressed with time.