Funding

The WSMPA work is financially supported by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) through the Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (BLE) (grant nos. 2813HS009 and 2819HS015).

We are grateful to the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI), which supports the WSMPA project with work equipment, necessary infrastructure as well as personnel and travel support.

In addition, we would like to thank the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection, and the Federal Foreign Office for their support of the WSMPA project at the political level.

We also would like to thank all scientific colleagues at AWI and other (inter-) national scientific institutions, who have supported us in the past years in the Weddell Sea Marine Protected Area project in many different ways, e.g. by providing data or critically discussing relevant scientific topics within the framework of the project.