Researchers have discovered a "hidden world" of unidentified animals under the ice in Antarctica

It turns out that there is a hidden world of creatures that live deep beneath the ice sheet in Antarctica.

The secret ecosystem was found more than 1,600 feet below the surface and caused researchers to jump for joy

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16/06/2022

Thursday, 16 June 2022, 23:47 Updated: Friday, 17 June 2022, 00:08

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Antarctica (Antarctica- A Year on Ice Teaser Trailer)

An unprecedented ecosystem lurks in an underground river, deep beneath the frozen surface of Antarctica.

Recently, researchers found a "hidden world" with a dark, jagged cave full of flocks of tiny shrimp-like creatures.

Scientists have found the secret underground habitat hidden beneath Larsen's ice shelf - a massive floating ice sheet connected to the east coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, which spawned the world's largest glacier in 2021. Satellite images showed an unusual groove in the ice shelf near where it met With the country, and the researchers identified the special sight as an underground river, which they described in a statement they published on the subject.

The crew drilled about 1,640 feet (500 meters) below the ice surface using a powerful hot water pipe, to reach the hidden underground world.

Researchers drilled more than 1,600 feet under Larsen's ice shelf (Photo: screenshot, NIWA / CRAIG STEVENS)

As investigators sent a camera through the frozen tunnel into the cave, hundreds of tiny, blurry spots in the water obscured what was visible.

At first the team thought that their photographic equipment was damaged, but after refocusing the camera - they realized that the lens was surrounded by tiny crustaceans called amphipods.

It caught the crew unprepared, as they did not expect to find any trace of life so deep in the icy water.

"While these creatures are swimming around our camera, it is clear to us that there is an important ecosystem process going on there," Craig Stevens, a physical oceanographer at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) in Auckland, New Zealand, said in a statement.

The discovery of the secret structure infested with crustaceans caused the team to "jump up and down with joy," Stevens described.

That's what they found there

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A post shared by NIWA - Taihoro Nukurangi (@niwa_science)

Experts have long suspected that there is a huge network of rivers, lakes and effluents beneath Antarctica, but so far these properties have been little studied.

It was not previously known if there was life in them, making the new find the most thought-provoking.

"Observing and sampling this river felt like being the first to enter a hidden world," lead researcher Hugh Horgan, a cardiologist at the University of Victoria in Wellington, New Zealand, told The Guardian.

Horgan first identified clues to the underground structure in 2020 while looking at a satellite image of the area.

It looks like a long depression, or groove, that stretches across the ice - a hallmark of an underground river.

However, despite being conspicuous in satellite imagery, the groove initially eluded surface detection, Stevens said, "but then we found this tiny, delicate slope and guessed we had come to the right place."

More on the subject

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To the full article

The lower part of the frozen roof of the river does not look like what the researchers expected (Photo: screenshot, NIWA / CRAIG STEVENS)

Scientists will continue to study the new underground ecosystem and hope to learn more about how food components in water pass through cycles through Antarctica's underground water networks to support its abundance of life.

Researchers believe there is a huge network of lakes and rivers beneath Antarctica.

However, they fear that even hidden ecosystems like this may be at risk of a rapid rise in temperatures caused by climate change.

“The climate is changing and some key foci are still not understood by science,” Stephen said.

"But what's clear is that big changes are on the doorstep."

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