{"id":392017,"date":"2026-04-22T11:32:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T11:32:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/392017\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T11:32:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T11:32:16","slug":"nat-geo-explorer-cristian-lagger-is-exploring-some-of-earths-coldest-places","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/392017\/","title":{"rendered":"Nat Geo Explorer Cristian Lagger is exploring some of Earth\u2019s coldest places"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Reporting in this article is presented by the National Geographic Society in partnership with Rolex under the National Geographic and Rolex <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalgeographic.org\/society\/our-programs\/perpetual-planet-expeditions\/\" dir=\"ltr\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Perpetual Planet Ocean Expeditions<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">From its desolate,\u00a0frozen crust, Antarctica seems like a place unsuited for life. But just offshore, the depths of the Southern Ocean tell a different story. Hundreds of feet below the surface, there are translucent icefish guarding their eggs, octopuses lolling in the undersea current, and alien-looking isopod crustaceans creeping among a colorful menagerie of sponges and sea stars. \u201cIt blows your mind,\u201d says marine biologist and National Geographic Explorer Cristian Lagger. \u201cAt the bottom of the sea, Antarctica is a rich continent with many species, colors, textures, and shapes.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">During a recent expedition, Lagger peered into those frigid depths from the control room of the Schmidt Ocean Institute\u2019s research vessel,\u00a0Falkor (too),\u00a0as live video from its remotely operated vehicle,\u00a0SuBastian,\u00a0streamed on a monitor. His research team had reached a previously undocumented\u00a0patch of an ocean floor trench, where\u00a0SuBastian\u00a0explored a gently sloped area from a depth of more than 3,000 feet to about 1,000 feet.\u00a0Lagger and his colleagues felt like astronauts exploring a new frontier.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Crue in bright yellow suites watching the apparatus going down from dock into water.\" class=\"hsDdd NDJZt sJeUN IJwXl vBqtr KrDt itslR zFTjo hakZw HlUVI UbGlr \" data-testid=\"prism-image\" draggable=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/NS123467854_NGSPPOCN_Lujan_Agusti_DSC4991.jpg\" id=\"Cristian Lagger_MF4180-vehicle\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Lagger\u2019s team used the Schmidt Ocean Institute\u2019s remotely operated vehicle to explore the deep reaches of the Southern Ocean.<\/p>\n<p>Luja\u0301n Agusti<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">The Southern Ocean\u00a0plays an outsize role in the health of our planet by absorbing more human-caused carbon dioxide\u00a0than\u00a0any other ocean and\u00a0regulating\u00a0the climate through its currents and seasonal ice.\u00a0But as a recent NASA-supported study notes, current carbon sink estimates are limited because \u201charsh conditions there make collecting good data difficult.\u201d So, little of the seabed has been studied and much\u00a0remains\u00a0unknown. By\u00a0probing\u00a0its deep reaches, Lagger and his team, who are based at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina, hope to discover new species and update carbon storage estimates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reporting in this article is presented by the National Geographic Society in partnership with Rolex under the National&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392018,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[21453,202658,273,111,139,69,202657,147,54367],"class_list":{"0":"post-392017","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-antarctica","9":"tag-cristian-lagger","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-por-el-mar","15":"tag-science","16":"tag-southern-ocean"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}