Fish Live Beneath Antarctica

January 23, 2015 2:37 PM

Scientists find translucent fish in a wedge of water hidden under 740 meters of ice, 850 kilometers from sunlight
posted by brundlefly (25 comments total)

Wow. I mean. Whhh- wow.
Wow.
posted by From Bklyn at 2:44 PM on January 23, 2015 [4 favorites]

These fish, attracted perhaps by the novelty of light, were “curious and docile,” Zook says. “I think they’re bored. I know I would be.”
posted by theodolite at 2:44 PM on January 23, 2015 [6 favorites]

LIFE FINDS A WAY
posted by Pater Aletheias at 2:46 PM on January 23, 2015 [9 favorites]

Give that niche a species.

Niches love species.
posted by maryr at 2:46 PM on January 23, 2015 [32 favorites]

"[...] as well as a handful of other marine invertebrates that the team has so far declined to describe."

Iä! Iä! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
posted by Hairy Lobster at 2:48 PM on January 23, 2015 [36 favorites]

Up top, Zook fashioned some window screening into a trap for crustaceans. Michaud built a fish trap using parts from a lobster trap that Zook had purchased as a joke at a sporting goods store in New Zealand while in route to Antarctica. They have so far caught a handful of crustaceans for further scientific study—but no fishes, at this writing.

This is the best part.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 2:55 PM on January 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

Hard to imagine what these fish are experiencing, if they have never before had the sensation of light. An entirely new sensory input, from a sensitive & vulnerable area of their heads that had not been very useful prior to this.
posted by King Sky Prawn at 3:14 PM on January 23, 2015 [3 favorites]

ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS, EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE. ALL THESE WORLDS ARE
posted by itstheclamsname at 3:26 PM on January 23, 2015 [5 favorites]

[typing]

GOING TO STAY AWHILE
posted by Fizz at 3:34 PM on January 23, 2015 [3 favorites]

2010 vs. Europa Report
Whoever wins, they get the new warm beachfront property.
posted by localroger at 3:38 PM on January 23, 2015

Came for the Lovecraft reference, was not disappointed!
posted by retronic at 3:45 PM on January 23, 2015 [3 favorites]

haha what a story Zook
posted by mannequito at 3:52 PM on January 23, 2015

It's interesting that the shrimp was red. A lot of prey species are red at the ocean depths, because that's the colour that's most difficult to see at those depths. It suggests that the shrimp was being predated, but in a lot of cold water, creatures move very slowly. There must be some kind of energy source to fuel all of that movement. I'd love to know what it was.
posted by Solomon at 4:04 PM on January 23, 2015 [2 favorites]

"And now Barry Andrews of Shriekback with your post-punk science news, Barry?"

"Well, Jim, we get it right sometimes, we shine a light sometimes - and, if we're really lucky, we see the fish below the ice sometimes."
posted by jason_steakums at 4:20 PM on January 23, 2015 [4 favorites]

This post's title is both a wonderful fact and a weirdly meditative sentiment. Imagine someone saying it, with a deep, husky voice. Fish live beneath Antarctica. Dub in some wind sounds afterwards, maybe a pine forest creaking. Now imagine someone putting the stresses on different words. Fish live beneath Antarctica. Fish live beneath Antarctica. Fish live beneath Antarctica. Fish live beneath Antarctica.

....

I think I need to spend some time off the internet. Maybe in Antarctica, looking at fish.
posted by Going To Maine at 4:32 PM on January 23, 2015 [7 favorites]

These fish, attracted perhaps by the novelty of light, were “curious and docile,” Zook says. “I think they’re bored. I know I would be.”

The eyes of those fish are huge, well-formed and obviously functional; there's no way light is entirely novel to them.

But I think hardy any sunlight is going to make it through 74 meters of ice.

I wonder whether the shrimp actually glow a little bit -- or perhaps whatever the shrimp are eating glows, and the fish can hunt the shrimp as they occlude that glow.
posted by jamjam at 4:33 PM on January 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

It seems that amphipods (the "shrimp" I mentioned, that isn't actually a shrimp) will eat pretty much anything. The article does mention that the team also spotted several other marine invertebrates, but I'm guessing that they're not microscopic creatures.

I wonder if the fish head under the ice to spawn, or something? I realise I'm clutching at straws, but it does seem that there wouldn't be much in that particular place that would predate the eggs. As jamjam points out, the eyes do seem well developed, unlike in some cave fish whose eyes have withered away (what is the evolutionary term for when a species loses an ability it previously had?).
posted by Solomon at 4:41 PM on January 23, 2015

>>Give that niche a species.

Niches love species.

The Middle Ages and even the ancient Greeks had something remarkably like this: the principle of plenitude:

Name given by Lovejoy to a principle he detected in much Greek and medieval thought, that the existence and abundance of creation must be as great as the possibility of existence, commensurate therefore with an infinite and inexhaustible source. For if such a source could have reason to make any possibility actual, which we know it to have since there is an actual world, then it would have reason to actualize every possibility consistent with its nature.

posted by jamjam at 4:44 PM on January 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

Professor Google tells me that the Antarctic ice sheet reached continental proportions around 30 million years ago. It's hard to square that sort of period with those fish retaining such obviously functional eyes, if it really is that dark down there and if that environment really is sealed off. Perhap they got there through the glacier - if viable eggs were deposited up top through some mechanism and gradually migrated downwards as the glacier melted from underneath... but hey, it's all pretty unlikely.

This is the best science, when a fish winks at you from nearly a kilometre beneath a glacier and (obviously) thinks "Hah. Fat lot THEY know".

(But I do hope that robot was sterile. That must be a pretty finely balanced environment, and we have a bad record on giving hitch-hikers lifts)
posted by Devonian at 4:49 PM on January 23, 2015 [2 favorites]

But I think hardy any sunlight is going to make it through 74 meters of ice.

Make that "740 meters of ice."
posted by jamjam at 4:50 PM on January 23, 2015

This is how The Thing: 2015 begins, right?
posted by zippy at 4:55 PM on January 23, 2015

I've gotten very used to science "news" on the internet promising something amazing with a headline that turns out upon inspection to be fronting a story on something that's either (a) obviously fake, or (b) significantly less amazing that the headline suggested.

This is like the reverse of that. The headline was mildly intriguing, whereas the story actually made me say,"Whaaaaaaaaat?" Out loud, to an empty apartment.
posted by Ipsifendus at 4:56 PM on January 23, 2015 [6 favorites]

This is how The Thing: 2015 begins, right?
posted by zippy at 7:55 PM on January 23

There was this other "Antarctica" story a couple of weeks ago; the photo there of the impact crater made me have that very same thought.
posted by AsYouKnow Bob at 6:09 PM on January 23, 2015

there's no way light is entirely novel to them

2,427 feet of ice will block all sunlight but bio-luminescence is common in cave creatures.
posted by stbalbach at 6:24 PM on January 23, 2015

They're exploring the grounding zone, the spot where the glacier lifts off land and starts floating on top of the Ross Sea. So imagine, as a sense of scale, a mile or so out from Miami, under a slab of ice that's a bit shorter than Burj Khalifa and El Capitan, and the nearest water exposed to sunlight is somewhere around Jamaica.

Sort of deep down in the article: One source of food could be small plankton, grown in the sunlit waters of the Ross Sea then swept by currents under the ice shelf. But oceanographic models suggest that this food would have to drift six or seven years under the dark of the ice shelf before reaching the Whillans grounding zone, encountering plenty of other by other animals along the way. “The water will be pretty chewed on by the time it gets here,” Vick-Majors says. (emphasis added)

So it's possible that these critters migrate or mix with populations closer to the Ross Sea. It sounds like we just don't know much about this kind of grounding zone beyond a handful of core samples and seismic studies.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 8:31 PM on January 23, 2015 [1 favorite]