Shallow-Water Fauna Formation of the Antarctic Marginal Seas

Large-scale biological research conducted by the USSR and Russia in the Antarctic began in 1955 with the 1st Comprehensive Antarctic Expedition. Ten years later, in 1965, expeditions began in which the bottom biocenoses of the Antarctic were studied using lightweight diving equipment. Studies of the coastal bottom biota of the Antarctic continental seas, the representatives of which have a very wide range of vertical distribution in depth from the upper sublittoral of the shelf to the lower bathyal of the slope, prompted the submarine hydrobiologist E.N. Gruzov to develop the concept of the origin of the shelf fauna from representatives of the fauna preserved on the continental slope after the glacial maximum of the Sixth Continent.