Research team discovers new life flourishing under an ice shelf | The Excerpt
On Sunday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: On a recent expedition to Antarctica, researchers made a startling discovery after part of a huge ice sheet broke off. In the frigid waters originally hidden below, scientists discovered what appear to be new species of crustaceans, fish and other life forms. How is this possible and just how many more new life forms are waiting to be found? Jyotika Virmani, executive director of the Schmidt Ocean Institute, joins The Excerpt to share details of this remarkable discovery.
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Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Dana Taylor:
Life as we know it has changed. On a recent expedition to Antarctica, researchers made a startling discovery after part of a huge ice sheet broke off, revealing waters long hidden beneath. In it, the scientists encountered what appear to be new species of crustaceans, fish, and other life forms.
Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Sunday, April 13th, 2025. How is this possible and just how many more new life forms are waiting to be discovered? Here to shed light on this incredible new development is Jyotika Virmani, Head of the Schmidt Ocean Institute, a non-profit dedicated to global marine research that partially funded this work. Thanks for joining me, Jyotika.
Jyotika Virmani:
Thank you very much for inviting me, Dana.
Dana Taylor:
The team in Antarctica was researching something else altogether just prior to a Hampden iceberg cracking off the ice sheet. Walk me through the pivot here. Was there any hesitancy about switching their focus to this newly exposed body of water?
Jyotika Virmani:
So this was the first time that Schmidt Ocean Institute has been down to Antarctica as part of our first Antarctic field season. And so the team that was on board was of course monitoring the ice movements and on a regular basis from satellite imagery. And they saw the crack of this big, big iceberg from the George, the VI Ice Shelf. And of course they were monitoring it and normally it takes a while for such a large iceberg to break away. But this one started to move quite quickly and they realized that this was an amazing opportunity, a once in a lifetime opportunity because they were only a day or two away from that location. And normally it takes scientists months, if not longer, to get to a location where a piece of the ice is broken away. So it was a really fast decision, but it was really serendipitous and we really all needed to do that.
Dana Taylor:
The researchers discovered new and diverse ecosystems that had long been flourishing beneath the ice, but that the scientific world was wholly unaware of. What to you was the single most surprising find?
Jyotika Virmani:
I think the most surprising find was that there was so much life under this location. So imagine this is an iceberg that's 150 meters thick and it's been there for decades if not centuries. And it's dark down there and sunlight doesn't get down there. And so where is this life coming from? Where is it getting its nutrients? So the fact that there was so much life and not just one type of life, but a variety of life, sponges and corals and sea spiders and just a whole range of life shows that it was a really mature ecosystem. And it's been there obviously for a long time. So that was the biggest surprise, I think.
Dana Taylor:
Are we talking about all new species here? And how might this knowledge impact the scientific community?
Jyotika Virmani:
Some of the species we know about already and we see them in other parts of the ocean, but there are definitely new species and it will take a little while to identify what they are exactly. But there are so many yet unknowns about the ocean, not just about what lives there, but also the seafloor itself and what the shape of the seafloor is, if you like. All of this contributes to that knowledge that will help us to better understand the ocean.
Dana Taylor:
Prior to the iceberg calving... And you discussed this, but I want to circle back to how far below the surface these lifeforms were and if it is in any way clear how these species have been able to thrive beneath the ice. Does the early research tell you anything?
Jyotika Virmani:
We know how deep some of this lifeform is because we have on board our research vessel, a very sophisticated underwater robot called ROV SuBastian, which we can put down to about 4,500 meters depth. So in this case, we took it down and we found life as deep as 1,300 meters below the sea surface, which is amazing. How these creatures have thrived is one of the active regions of research now because it's not had direct sunlight and normally the nutrients come from the surface and they fall down through the ocean to these vast depths. So life thriving at over a thousand meters depth is part of the question of where are these nutrients coming from? One possible theory is that they are being brought through by ocean currents that are flowing underneath the ice shelf.
Dana Taylor:
Well, this is a dazzling discovery. It was unfortunately may possible likely do to climate change. What might future research teach us on that front?
Jyotika Virmani:
So the beauty of this piece of discovery of getting to this location so quickly after the ice broke off is we now have a baseline of information of what it was like there with the ice above it. And so this now sets a bar for future studies. And so scientists can come back next year or the year after and see how that ecosystem has evolved without the ice above it. And so that will then lend an understanding to what does the world look like if there wasn't ice covering some of these parts of the world.
Dana Taylor:
And are you concerned about the speed at which some of these species may have to acclimate to surface exposure or can they perhaps move beneath another part of the ice sheet?
Jyotika Virmani:
That's a very interesting question. Can they move? Some of them can move. Some of them though are embedded in that seabed. So they're anchored in place and they of course will not be able to move. That again, until we go back or until scientists go back in a few months or a year, it's really difficult to say how this ecosystem is going to evolve, but the fact that we have this baseline information is phenomenal.
Dana Taylor:
What can you share about the tech that made this discovery possible? How did the team do it?
Jyotika Virmani:
[inaudible 00:06:35] Ocean Institute operates the research vessel Falkor (too). It's a state-of-the-art sophisticated research vessel. It's 110 meters in length and it's built for science and it's got eight science labs on board. It's got a whole suite of sensors over 30 ocean and atmospheric sensors on board. And it has an ROV, which is a remotely operated vehicles, which is tethered to the vessel, which can collect samples as well as 4K video imagery, which we then transmit in real time to the world. And so anyone can join the Schmidt Ocean Institute on our YouTube channel and explore the ocean in real time just at the same time that the scientists are doing and make these discoveries at the same time. So it's like exploring a new world even though it's only a few kilometers away.
Dana Taylor:
I know that in your work you focused on mapping the ocean floor, roughly how much has been mapped and why is mapping important?
Jyotika Virmani:
About just over 26% of the seafloor has currently been mapped, which is quite surprising because the ocean covers 71% of our planet. So really we've not even mapped half of the planet Earth's surface. And so we are part of an international program where everyone is contributing the data that they map to this program called [inaudible 00:08:08] so that we can get a complete map of the seafloor. And we have on board Falkor (too), our research vessel full of sophisticated mapping technologies that can map down to the full ocean depth.
Dana Taylor:
As more research expeditions in that area take place, I don't know if they're already underway, but what can you share with us about what comes next in terms of exploration?
Jyotika Virmani:
The Antarctic is of course a very difficult, very harsh environment to operate in. And so it has a field season, which is only a few months, maybe from November if we're lucky to march. So the field season this year for Antarctic researchers and for ships go down there has essentially pretty much ended because the ice has expanded again. So now the next opportunity that scientists will have to go back to this region to continue looking at how the ecosystem has evolved will be most likely late... At the end of 2025, would be the earliest for any research vessel really to get down there.
Dana Taylor:
As our oceans continue to warm, do you expect this Bellingshausen Sea discovery to be just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, in terms of finding new species? And could we eventually see some of the sea creatures found there in our more familiar waterways?
Jyotika Virmani:
I think as parts of the ocean do get uncovered around Antarctica, we will find new species. And in fact, wherever we sail, even away from Antarctica, even in the tropics, we always find new species because there is still so much yet to be learned about the ocean. The ocean, it is about 97% of the living space, the deep sea of the living space on our planet, and we've only barely scratched that surface in terms of seeing what's down there.
Dana Taylor:
Jyotika, thank you so much for being on The Excerpt.
Jyotika Virmani:
Thank you so much for inviting me, Dana.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks to our senior producers Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.