From Discovery News:
Shrimp Dinner Found Beneath Antarctic Ice
Higher orders of life can apparently thrive in even the most extreme environments.
Mon Mar 15, 2010 02:30 PM ET | content provided by Seth Borenstein, Associated Press
* A shrimp-like creature and a jellyfish have been discovered below a massive Antarctic ice sheet.
* NASA scientists had only expected to find a few microbes.
* The food source for these tiny critters is still a mystery.
Six hundred feet below the ice where no light shines, scientists had figured nothing much more than a few microbes could exist.
That’s why a NASA team was surprised when they lowered a video camera to get the first long look at the underbelly of an ice sheet in Antarctica. A curious shrimp-like creature came swimming by and then parked itself on the camera’s cable. Scientists also pulled up a tentacle they believe came from a foot-long jellyfish.
“We were operating on the presumption that nothing’s there,” said NASA ice scientist Robert Bindschadler, who will be presenting the initial findings and a video at an American Geophysical Union meeting Wednesday. “It was a shrimp you’d enjoy having on your plate.”
“We were just gaga over it,” he said of the 3-inch-long, orange critter starring in their two-minute video. Technically, it’s not a shrimp. It’s a Lyssianasid amphipod, which is distantly related to shrimp.
This is a Dutch video on the new discovery.
Life can persist in cold, dark world: Life under Antarctic ice explored: here.
February 2014: Changes in Antarctic ice can now be recorded in unprecedented minute detail thanks to a series of radars deployed on Antarctica: here.
A study shows that the melting of the West Antarctic ice shelf will raise global sea levels substantially beyond the predictions of the UN: here.
Underwater forests of Antarctica: here.