Ecosystems hidden under ice Early in 2025, an iceberg called A-84 broke away from the George VI Ice Shelf<\/a> and uncovered seafloor<\/a> that had been hidden under ice.\u00a0<\/p>\n This new opening in the Bellingshausen Sea gave researchers their first direct look at a deep polar habitat that sunlight never reaches.<\/p>\n The work was led by Michelle Taylor, head of science at Nippon Foundation-Nekton Ocean Census and lecturer at the University of Essex<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Her research focuses on deep sea corals and how polar ecosystems respond to environmental change.<\/p>\n To reach the newly exposed seabed safely, the team sent down a remotely operated vehicle, a tethered robot submarine that carries lights and cameras.\u00a0<\/p>\n Guided from the deck of the ship, this robot moved slowly over the bottom taking samples and recording detailed video.<\/p>\n They saw hydrothermal vents, hot springs on the seafloor that release mineral rich fluids. They also filmed bright coral gardens and the first confirmed footage of a juvenile colossal squid.<\/p>\n Death ball sponge\u2019s hunting tricks<\/p>\n Among the new species<\/a>, the most unsettling may be a carnivorous sea sponge that feeds by trapping and digesting animals.\u00a0<\/p>\n This species has a nearly spherical body covered in tiny hooked structures, so small crustaceans that brush against it cannot escape.<\/p>\n It belongs to Cladorhizidae<\/a>, a family of deep sea sponges that hunt rather than filter feed. In this group, thin filaments or small spheres form sticky surfaces that hold prey.<\/p>\n Carnivorous cladorhizid sponges occur in several oceans and are especially common at great depths where food in the water is scarce.\u00a0<\/p>\n Studies suggest that this feeding style helps them survive where ordinary filter feeding would not supply enough energy.<\/p>\n Work in the Weddell Sea has recorded<\/a> at least 27 carnivorous sponges in the Southern Ocean, more than half of them endemic.\u00a0<\/p>\n The new death ball sponge adds one more specialist to that hidden collection and hints that many relatives still wait to be described.<\/p>\n Strange worms that feed on bones<\/p>\n Another standout resident of this seafloor is Osedax<\/a>, a bone eating worm that lives on sunken bones.\u00a0<\/p>\n These so-called zombie worms strip fats from the bones of whales and other large animals that die and sink into cold water.<\/p>\n Females lack a mouth and gut, instead relying on symbiotic bacteria, microbes that live inside their tissues and help release nutrients from the bone.\u00a0<\/p>\n Studies<\/a> of their breathing show that this partnership lets them thrive inside bones with little oxygen and many other reactive chemicals.<\/p>\n Since their first description from a whale skeleton off California in 2004, Osedax species have been found on many bones, including cow and fish bones.\u00a0<\/p>\n That flexibility helps explain why zombie worms appear at whale falls worldwide and likely play a major role in recycling vertebrate remains on the seafloor.<\/p>\n In the Southern Ocean survey, the worms were seen on seal bones scattered near volcanic islands, quietly tunneling through the remains.\u00a0<\/p>\n Their presence beside the death ball sponge shows how many different feeding strategies can share the same small patch of seafloor<\/a>.<\/p>\n Life on volcanic and vented seafloor<\/p>\n Around the hydrothermal vents near the South Sandwich Islands, animals live in a chemical hotspot instead of a sunlit food web.\u00a0<\/p>\n These communities rely on chemosynthetic microbes, organisms that get energy from chemical reactions rather than from light.<\/p>\n Previous expeditions<\/a> to vents on the East Scotia Ridge showed that Southern Ocean vent fields host unusual communities compared with those at lower latitudes.\u00a0<\/p>\n At these sites, crabs, barnacles, snails, and more crowd around vent openings supported by bacteria that use chemicals in the hot fluids.<\/p>\n In these surveys, scientists documented armored iridescent scale worms, unfamiliar sea stars, and crustaceans including isopods and amphipods adapted to volcanic slopes.\u00a0<\/p>\n They also found snails and clams near vent fluids, hinting that some species<\/a> live close to chemical sources while others keep a safer distance.<\/p>\n The team even visited parts of the South Sandwich Trench, a hadal zone, the deepest band of ocean trenches below about 20,000 feet.\u00a0<\/p>\n At those depths, pressure is crushing, water stays near freezing, and yet life still forms communities on rocky outcrops and patchy sediments.<\/p>\n Southern Ocean is mostly unmapped<\/p>\n Despite decades of work, scientists know less about seafloor life in the Southern Ocean than about continental shelves closer to major research centers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Seafloor surveys in Antarctica have revealed<\/a> high biodiversity, many different species living together, yet large areas remain barely sampled.<\/p>\n \u201cTo date, we have only assessed under 30% of the samples collected from this expedition,\u201d said Taylor. The Southern Ocean remains profoundly under-sampled.\u00a0<\/p>\n Working in this region means long transit times, harsh storms, and a narrow weather window, so only a few research ships visit each year.\u00a0<\/p>\n When they do, there is only enough time to sample a small number of sites, leaving huge stretches of seafloor unvisited.<\/p>\n Because of that, many polar habitats are effectively invisible in conservation plans, which often rely on existing records of species.\u00a0<\/p>\n Each confirmed species<\/a> becomes a data point that helps reveal where communities live and how they might respond to warming or fishing pressure.<\/p>\n From seabed to database<\/p>\n In the past, samples from deep sea cruises could sit in jars for years before taxonomists, scientists who name and classify species, examined them.\u00a0<\/p>\n Limited staff and funding meant that many collections never received a full check, even when they contained species that were new to science.<\/p>\n For this work, the team assembled experts in a species discovery workshop so they could process specimens on board instead of shipping them away.\u00a0<\/p>\n When anatomy alone was not enough, they used DNA barcoding, a method that matches short genetic sequences to known lineages, to flag new animals.<\/p>\n \u201cAccelerating species discovery is not a scientific luxury, it is essential for public good,\u201d said Mitsuyuki Unno, Executive Director of The Nippon Foundation.\u00a0<\/p>\n He sees faster discovery as a way to give scientists and policymakers basic knowledge while there is still time to protect fragile habitats.<\/p>\n \u201cEach confirmed species is a building block for conservation, biodiversity studies, and untold future scientific endeavors,\u201d said Dr. Taylor.\u00a0<\/p>\n Those building blocks will support conservation efforts far beyond this one expedition.<\/p>\n Sea sponges and ocean mysteries<\/p>\n Polar seafloor ecosystems are feeling the effects of warming, shifting currents, and changes in sea ice, even though many have not yet been mapped.\u00a0<\/p>\n Knowing which species<\/a> live where helps scientists predict which communities might cope with shifting conditions and which might disappear.<\/p>\n At the same time, interest in mining, fishing, and bioprospecting, searching for useful compounds in organisms, is increasing faster than surveys of life.\u00a0<\/p>\n Without data from places such as the South Sandwich Islands and Bellingshausen Sea, it is hard to judge potential damage new industries could cause.<\/p>\n The Nippon Foundation-Nekton Ocean Census aims to close that gap by combining ship time, robots, and workshops to turn samples into data.\u00a0<\/p>\n The death ball sponge and its neighbors are examples of how that approach can reveal species that would otherwise remain hidden in the dark.<\/p>\n These strange creatures are not just curiosities but key observations about how life adapts to harsh conditions on Earth.\u00a0<\/p>\n Each new deep sea species from the Southern Ocean adds detail and shows that parts of the ocean lie beyond maps.<\/p>\n Image Credit: The Nippon Foundation-Nekton Ocean Census\/Schmidt Ocean Institute \u00a9 2025.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a> for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.\u00a0<\/p>\n Check us out on EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls<\/a> and Earth.com.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Far beneath Antarctic waters, scientists have found a killer sea sponge with a near perfect ball shape that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[85,46,141,386],"class_list":{"0":"post-173117","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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