Life Located 900M Under Antarctic Ice Accidentally Discovered By Scientists

Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com – Marine life has been discovered 900 meters below an Antarctic ice shelf, report scientists. Apparently, far underneath the ice shelves of the Antarctic, there’s more life than previously expected.

The team drilled through hundreds of meters of Antarctic ice to find creatures living in complete darkness. – Copyright Huw Griffiths/BAS By Rosie Frost

Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) found animals – including sea sponges and several potentially undiscovered species – living in complete darkness and temperatures of -2.2 °C.

Very few creatures have been found living in such extreme conditions and the discovery goes against all previous theories about what kind of life could survive there.

Geologists were drilling through the ice to collect sediment samples when they hit a boulder. They sent cameras down to investigate and ended up seeing organisms clinging to the rock.

“This discovery is one of those fortunate accidents that pushes ideas in a different direction and shows us that Antarctic marine life is incredibly special and amazingly adapted to a frozen world,” says biogeographer and lead author, Dr Huw Griffiths of British Antarctic Survey.

“Our discovery raises so many more questions than it answers, such as how did they get there? What are they eating? How long have they been there? How common are these boulders covered in life? Are these the same species as we see outside the ice shelf or are they new species? And what would happen to these communities if the ice shelf collapsed?”

“We were expecting to retrieve a sediment core from under the ice shelf, so it came as a bit of a surprise when we hit the boulder and saw from the video footage that there were animals living on it,” Dr James Smith, a geologist at BAS who was part of the drilling team said in a press release.

The drilling site was 260 kilometers away from open water, leaving scientists puzzled as to how these creatures have been obtaining enough food to survive.

Sponges and animals shown living under the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf. BAS

Described as a “fortunate accident”, this raises more questions than it answers including what would happen to these newly discovered communities if the ice shelf were to collapse, says lead author of the study, Dr Huw Griffiths.

Floating ice shelves are “the greatest unexplored habitat” in the Southern Ocean, according to the BAS. Although they cover 1.5 million square kilometres of the Antarctic, only an area the size of a tennis court has been studied so far.

However, studying these previously unexplored ecosystems maybe soon very difficult because global warming puts these systems in danger. It increases the risk that Antarctic ice shelves – including Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf where this marine life was found, will collapse into the sea.

“To answer our questions we will have to find a way of getting up close with these animals and their environment – and that’s under 900m of ice, 260 km away from the ships where our labs are,” adds Griffiths.

“This means that as polar scientists we are going to have to find new and innovative ways to study them and answer all the new questions we have.”

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Written by Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com Staff