cientists uncover Antarctic sea creatures trapped under ice for 50 years

cientists uncover Antarctic sea creatures trapped under ice for 50 years

Source: livescience

3/20/2021

When a gargantuan iceberg calved off of Antarctica last month, it revealed a bustling community of sea life for the first time in decades.
About two weeks ago, an iceberg large enough to hold New York City nearly two times over cracked off of the Antarctic Ice Sheet and began drifting slowly through the Weddell Sea. Now, researchers have gotten a rare glimpse at the marine life living deep below the ice — finally exposed after five decades of ice cover.

Cruising through the narrow gap between the newly-liberated iceberg, named A-74, and the Brunt Ice Shelf in northern Antarctica, the German research vessel Polarstern took hours of footage and thousands of photos of the reclusive creatures living 18 miles (30 kilometers) below the surface. The researchers discovered a bustling community of mollusks, filter feeders, sea stars, sea cucumbers, and at least five species of fish and two squid species, they reported.

"The first images from the seafloor reveal an amazing level of biodiversity in a region that was covered by thick ice for decades," researchers with the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven, Germany, which is in charge of the Polarstern mission, said in a statement.