Iceberg Breaks Off Antarctica, Revealing Tentacled Creatures Beneath

In large part thanks to being in the right place at the right time, researchers discovered a thriving marine ecosystem underneath a 19-miles iceberg after it cracked off the ice sheet off the coast of Antarctica earlier this year.

As the Washington Post reports, a team of researchers on board a vessel called the "Falkor (too)" — yes, that's it's name, including the parentheses — weren't expecting to find many signs of life on the seafloor following the powerful event.

But to their shock, they found potentially dozens of new species trapped underneath, including crustaceans, octopi, sea snails, worms, and fish, per the WaPo — a powerful demonstration of how life can adapt to thrive even in some of the most extreme and remote areas of our planet.

Footage released by the Schmidt Ocean Institute, which facilitated the research, shows a baffling biodiversity, from long, tentacled anthropods to thorny red crustaceans.

One image released by the Institute shows off a "helmet jellyfish," which can be seen "with tentacles splayed."

"We didn't expect to find such a beautiful, thriving ecosystem," said University of Aveiro, Portugal, researcher and chief expedition scientist Patricia Esquete in a statement. "Based on the size of the animals, the communities we observed have been there for decades, maybe even hundreds of years."

It's a particularly fascinating place to look for life given the remoteness and darkness. It's also especially pertinent given our planet's rapidly changing climate. As human activity-driven global warming continues to cause glaciers and sea ice to melt, scientists are intrigued to see how a quickly evolving natural environment will affect these ecosystems.

After the berg broke off the ice shelf, Esquete and her team got to work collecting specimens. However, confirming any new species discoveries could take months.

"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 Esquete in the statement.

The formation from which the iceberg broke off in January, dubbed the George VI Ice Shelf, has borne the brunt of climate change and has seen record-high surface melt, as an alarming 2021 study showed.

"The George VI Ice Shelf buttresses the largest volume of upstream grounded ice of any Antarctic Peninsula ice shelf," said lead author and CIRES research scientist Alison Banwell in a statement at the time. "So if this ice shelf breaks up, ice that rests on land would flow more quickly into the ocean and contribute more to sea level rise than any other ice shelf on the Peninsula."

More on the Antarctic: Antarctic Research Stations in Chaos

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