The Associated Press plunges into the icy waters of the unknown to present us with an unspeakable creature… a shrimp that should not be:
Six hundred feet (183 metres) below the ice where no light shines, scientists had figured nothing much more than a few microbes could exist.
That is why a team from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration 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.
This is not the open ocean – it’s deep under a more-or-less solid chunk of ice that extends for miles. How these creatures got there is as much a mystery as how they’re continuing to survive.