Another giant iceberg breaks free leading to 'amazing' seabed find

When a giant iceberg the size of Chicago broke away from one of the massive floating glaciers making up the Antarctic Peninsula ice sheet in January this year, it exposed an expanse of seafloor never before observed by scientists.

Taking the opportunity to explore it, a team of researchers – an international team aboard the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s R/V Falkor (too) – changed their current course to find out just what the detached mass of ice could possibly have left in its wake.

What those researchers uncovered left them astonished. Because in its wake was left a “beautiful, thriving ecosystem” which – based on the size of the animals they found there – had likely “been there for decades… perhaps even centuries.”

As well as this, they found what is now suspected to be new species, too.

The team had originally been working in the Bellingshausen Sea but rapidly pivoted their research plans to study an area that had – until this January – been covered by ice. 

The expedition has now made history as the first detailed, comprehensive, and interdisciplinary study of the geology, physical oceanography, and the biology beneath such a large area once covered by a floating ice shelf.

The ice that calved was approximately 510 square-kilometres (around 209 square miles), revealing an equivalent area of seafloor.

“We seized upon the moment, changed our expedition plan, and went for it so we could look at what was happening in the depths below,” said expedition co-chief scientist, Dr Patricia Esquete of the Centre for Environmental and Marine Studies (CESAM) and the Department of Biology (DBio) at the University of Aveiro in Portugal.

“We didn’t expect to find such a beautiful, thriving ecosystem. Based on the size of the animals, the communities we observed have been there for decades, maybe even hundreds of years.”