Marine Protected Areas are vital to scientific investigation

These are the larger protected areas in the world. The Ross Sea would be among the largest protected area in the world and rightfully so. The Ross Sea would provide a valuable area to contain sealife of Antarctica void of fishing and tourism.

Currently, most shoreline biotic areas are interrupted by commercial ventures and skews the results by scientists to understand delicate balance of Arctic Species. 

Marine Conservation Institute (click here) 

The marine environment in Antarctica is unique. The waters of Antarctica are coastal where the waters of the Arctic Ocean is an ocean based environment. Coastal areas are very different than ocean environments. It is necessary to understand the arctic shoreline environments of Antarctica impacted by discharges of unique ice structures from sea ice to the massive glaciers themselves. This is not a frivolous pursuit. It is important to the marine scientists that call Antarctica home with their graduate students. 

Antarctica is the highest continent on Earth. (click here) It is also the world's fifth largest continent with an area of approximately 13.8 million km². This is about 58 times the area of the UK....

The contrast in life (click here) between the continent and the Southern Ocean is amazing: the largest land animal supported by the terrestrial ecosystem is the midge; whereas Blue Whales, the largest animals on the planet, are found in the surrounding seas. Even though seals and penguins spend some of their time out of the water, they too rely entirely on the sea for their food supply and are therefore part of the marine ecosystem....

The terrestrial mircrofauna supports the macrofauna in the sea. A marine protected area would assist in linking the relationship and how best to understand it.

Land fauna is nearly completely invertebrate. Invertebrate life includes microscopic mites, lice, nematodes, tardigrades, rotifers, krill and springtails. The flightless midge Belgica antarctica, just 12 millimeters (0.5 in) in size, is the smallest land animal in Antarctica. The Snow Petrel is one of only three birds that breed exclusively in Antarctica. They have been seen at the South Pole.

Some of these investigations have implications in understand and applications to other areas of science and medicine.
 
Mar Biotechnol (NY). 2007 May-Jun;9(3):293-304. Epub 2006 Dec 29. (click here)
The Antarctic marine environment is characterized by challenging conditions for the survival of native microorganisms. Indeed, next to the temperature effect represented by the Arrhenius law, the viscosity of the medium, which is also significantly enhanced by low temperatures, contributes to slow down reaction rates.


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