Chicago-Sized Iceberg Hid Ancient Ecosystem, Scientists Reveal

Scientists scrutinizing the seafloor beneath a calving iceberg found a remarkable array of living creatures, switching up notions of how the giant chunks of ice affect their immediate environs. The scientists investigated a region of seafloor recently exposed by the calving of a gigantic iceberg—A-84—which is as large as Chicago. The team found a surprisingly vibrant community of critters on the seafloor below where A-84 was once attached to an ice shelf attached to Antarctica. “We didn’t expect to find such a beautiful, thriving ecosystem,” said Patricia Esquete, the expedition’s co-chief scientist and a researcher at the University of Aveiro in Portugal, in a British Antarctic Survey release. “Based on the size of the animals, the communities we observed have been there for decades, maybe even hundreds of years.” Without the 197-square-mile (510-square-kilometer) iceberg in the way, the team was able to scrutinize the seafloor at depths of 4,265 feet (1,300 meters) using the remot ... Read full article.