28 February 2007
IT HAS been called the last marine frontier. Now seabed that was hidden for thousands of years below Antarctic ice sheets has been visited. Nearly barren in some places, in others it is teeming with life.
The unexplored zone was covered by the Larsen A and B ice shelves until they collapsed in 1995 and 2002 respectively. Researchers led by Julian Gutt, based at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, sent down a remotely operated submersible to capture video footage and collect samples.
Where the ice shelves scraped along the bottom, the seabed is bare. In other areas, animals and plants are thriving and seem to be long established. In particular, there are a lot of sea cucumbers, normally found at depths below 2000 metres but now discovered living above 850 metres. Among potentially new species are two of octopus and 15 new shrimp ...