Researchers accidentally discover living creatures under Antarctic ice shelf

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When an Antarctic research team's expedition didn't go according to plan, it was "amazing" news for Huw Griffiths.

Years ago, the marine biologist's colleagues were drilling through nearly a kilometre of Antarctic ice shelf on the Weddell Sea, hoping to get a sample of the sediment below. But instead, they hit a boulder and found something completely unexpected — stationary life forms. 

When Griffiths saw the footage of the stationary marine organisms in the icy depths, he was baffled. 

"In a normal environment, that would be quite a normal thing to see. But where we were looking, it was really strange to see animals that are dependent on filter feeding," Griffiths, who works for the British Antarctic Survey, told As It Happens host Carol Off.

He's the lead author of a paper published Monday in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science about the unexpected marine organisms, including some sponges, living on the boulder. 

Griffiths compared the environment these creatures live in to "the biggest cave you can imagine." 

"There's 900 metres thick ice roofed to the whole thing and you're 260 kilometres away from the nearest open water, which is where the food is being produced in the daylight." 

The further away from the daylight, the further away from a regular supply of food, Griffiths said. 

"If you're living there in the back of the cave, you're probably better off being ... like a fish, or a shrimp-type animal that can move around and go to where the food is," said Griffiths.

"Whereas these animas are stuck to a rock so they can't go anywhere. They're dependent on food literally floating into them." 

A year ago, Griffiths and an international team of experts published a paper that said they didn't expect to find these kinds of creatures living this far back under ice shelves. But now, they've been proven wrong. 

"So there's a lot of big questions," Griffiths said, including how the life forms got there, how they are surviving, what they're eating, and whether there are any new species among them. 

"Only having the video, we can only go so far without answering those questions."

Ice shelves cover a huge amount of the Antarctic continental shelf, Griffiths said.

"If we've only seen one boulder and there [are] potentially thousands or millions of boulders lying about on the sea floor, we could be looking at a whole community … hidden biodiversity and potentially even a hidden role within the health of the Antarctic ecosystem that we don't fully understand," he said.

Griffiths said the team can't identify all the creatures, because most appear simply as vague shapes in the footage. But "two of them are definitely sponges," he said. 

He said it will take smarter robotics or shrunken technology to further study these creatures because the boreholes are only about a foot across.

"In the meantime, we can use some really cool imaging techniques — something called environmental DNA, where we collect water samples and blood samples," Griffiths said. "So we may not get what the sponges are, but we might be able to pick up bits of what they're eating."

Griffiths says scientists will probably have to invest in new technology to properly study the animals without harming them. 

"It's a fantastic opportunity to bring in a whole international team of people and really get them on board with the idea that there are mysteries to solve in Antarctica that nobody even knew existed as mysteries, let alone then how we solve them."

Written by Tahiat Mahboob. Interview produced by Katie Geleff.