LONDON: In a cold and dark underwater world, where a never-ending rain of rocks keeps the seafloor barren, researchers were startled to find fish, crustaceans and jellyfish investigating a submersible camera after drilling through nearly 2,500 feet (740 meters) of Antarctic ice.
Scientists discovered the underwater sea life inhabiting one of the world’s most extreme ecosystems by using a submersible camera at nearly 530 miles or 850 kilometers beneath the Ross Ice Shelf.
Slawek Tulaczyk, a glaciologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz and a chief scientist on the drilling project, says that “this is the closest we can get to something like Europa,” referring to Jupiter’s icy moon.
The scientists are sponsored by the National Science Foundation and are taking part in one of the largest glaciological experiments ever undertaken by the Willans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling Project in Antarctica. Using the same equipment and expertise used in 2013 to reach Lake Whillans in Antarctica, researchers began drilling on January 8 using a specialized hot water drill and came across the life on January 16.
The fish and crustaceans they found thriving in the icy and rocky seafloor turned out to be the farthest south they have even been found with most of the translucent pink fish measuring 8 inches or 20 centimeters long. According to Tulaczyk, the constantly melting ice sheet could have been responsible for the desolate conditions and harshest environments where the under-ice fish were found.
