The ice is thick at the point where a team of researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) drilled two holes with hot water. Nevertheless, it discovered an astonishing biological diversity on the sea floor not far from Neumayer Station III on the Ekström shelf ice cream in the southeastern Weddellmeer.
As the group now explains in the journal »Current Biology«, a total of 77 species came to light. This makes the biodiversity even greater than many samples taken in open water, writes the team led by David Barnes, lead author and marine biologist at the British Antarctic Survey.
The remarkable thing about the dark ecosystem under the thick ice is that no plants or algae thrive there, but nevertheless most of the living beings found there feed on microalgae. Apparently, what is washed up from beyond the ice shelf edge is enough for the filterers – enough to grow about as fast as other species in open water. The open sea is three to nine kilometers away from the sampling point.
The species discovered under the mischief includes saber -shaped Bryozoen (moss animals) and limestone tubeworms. In order to find out how long the ecosystem has existed, the experts dated samples of dead animals in the sidelines -close sediments using the radiocarbon method. The oldest parts were 5800 years old. So there seems to be "an oasis of life under the Schelfeis for almost 6000 years," says Gerhard Kuhn from AWI.
The fact that life is also possible in even more extreme ice habitats was shown in a publication from February 2021. At that time, a team of scientists even found a small ecosystem under a 900-meter-thick ice sheet. Here the nearest photosynthesis source was about 1500 kilometers away.
