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VIDEO BY BRITISH ANTARCTIC SURVEY
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By Rachael Bale, ANIMALS Executive Editor
Life finds all kinds of ways to survive extremes. Tube worms thrive in the superheated, super-sulfurous water near deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Tardigrades, also known as water bears or moss piglets, can go up to 30 years without food or water. Lichens that make their homes in the pores of sandstone survive such extremes that scientists have proposed them as possible analogs for Martian life forms.
And now, newly discovered Antarctic sea sponges are joining this rarefied group of extremophiles. Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey got a surprise when they drilled a bore hole through a half-mile thick ice shelf—and hit a boulder. Normally that’s a bad thing. But they dropped a camera down the hole (pictured above) and found something far more exciting. Beneath the ice, in total darkness and in near-freezing water, they saw a variety of animals clinging to the rock, including 16 sponges and 20 other unidentified creatures.
It’s the first time this kind of marine community has been found beneath an ice sheet, and it’s a reminder of how little we know about life on our own planet, Nat Geo’s Douglas Main tells me. “Antarctica is surprisingly full of life,” says Nat Geo Explorer Ariel Waldman, who documented her separate five-week mission under the Antarctic ice here.
How do the animals get there? How do they get food? Are there more of them?
Antarctica’s floating ice shelves are one of the least explored habitats in the ocean. Although they cover an area about the size of Mongolia, scientists have only explored about a tennis court’s worth. This discovery calls for more exploration—and quickly. With the collapse of ice shelves due to climate change, there may not be much time left to see what other discoveries are hiding beneath.
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