Scientists kept this Antarctic sea floor sterile. But it’s silly before life

When the crew on board an Ocean Science expedition learned that an iceberg had broken off from Chicago from an Antarctic ice rink, they knew that they had to stop what they did immediately and had to try it out.

After all, it offered a unique opportunity to explore the sea floor in an area of ​​the ocean that had previously been cut off to humans.

Despite their excitement, the team at the Schmidt Ocean Institute ship did not believe that it would find a lot of life under the ice, far beyond the scope of the sun.

It turned out that they were dead.

The first picture that came from the team’s remote -controlled vehicle into the control room of the ship showed a large sea sponge with a crab that crawled on it, says Patricia Esquete, the chief scientist of the expedition at the time of discovery.

“It was a lot of excitement, “she said How it happens Host Nil Köksal. “Then, hour after hour and day after day, we saw more and more.”

Esquete and their colleagues have documented a surprisingly lush and diverse sea ecosystem that includes corals, sponges, fish, huge sea spiders, inkfish and much more, some of which are probably new in science.

But there is a mystery about how much life can thrive in the dark ocean depths, about 1,300 meters below George VI -Eisschelf, one of the massive, floating glaciers that are attached to the Antarctic ice plate.

It is also not clear what will happen to this ecosystem, which has now been fundamentally changed by the loss of this ice cream.

“It is a very interesting discovery, and I can hardly wait to see all the new ways and to understand what the biological diversity in these ecosystems maintains,” said Guadalupe Bibiesca-Contreras, an applied scientist in the English National Oceanography Center who was not involved in the expedition.

Esquete, a deepsea ecologist and taxonomist from Portugal’s University of Aveiro, says that the crew had explored the sea floors of the Bellingshausen -Sea along the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula in January when they saw through satellite images that a new iceberg of George VI.

“We knew immediately that we had to go there and explore this specific area,” she said. “Our expectations were a very impoverished ecosystem because a sea ecosystem is usually fed by the energy of the sun.”

This also applies in the deepest depths, since nutrients from photosynthetic organisms are slowly raining to maintain the ecosystems below.

But for centuries this region was covered with almost 150 meters of thick ice. Before that, the ice was so thick that it touched the sea floor.

“This means that photosynthesis cannot happen … and food is not produced,” said Esquete. “So we expected some life forms that are fed by food that are transported on the side by the currents, but we didn’t expect much.”

If food and energy do not rain from above, what has this region, which is teeming with life, then supplies and fed to electricity?

“This will really be the most exciting research that we can do,” said Esquete.

The team collected pictures as well as some specimens and geological rehearsals. Scientists will look at the geology of the region and sea currents to try “how the entire system works,” she said.

The first step, says Esquete, will be to classify all creatures you observed.

“So a complete morphological examination of all types we have found and then genetic analysis,” she said.

She suspects that dozens of them could be new to science.

“We Were in an area that was very little explored. And we know that when you explore the deep sea, when you try the deep sea, you will always find new species. “

While the iceberg calves, when and where it did, it was by chance for the crew, but it didn’t come out of nowhere. The ice shield has melting and shrinking for decades due to climate change.

Verena Tunnicliffe, biologist of the University of Victoria Marine, which was not involved in the expedition, wonders how this newly discovered ecosystem will change now after it has been exposed.

“You have used a very unusual opportunity to explore a world that has been hidden under extremely thick ice for thousands of years,” said Tunnicliffe, a Canadian research chair for Deep Ocean Research.

“This expedition is able to create a number of” basic lines “data: the original habitat and the ecosystem. And how will it change now that the curtain will be withdrawn? Hopefully it will remain accessible in the coming years to measure the changes and thus understand the unique conditions under the thick ice cream.”

Esquete is pleased to unravel some marine secrets.

“We really want to find out what makes life possible,” she said.