Never Before Seen Ecosystem is Revealed After Giant Iceberg Broke Off of the Antarctic Peninsula
And the international team of researchers investigating the 209-square-mile swath of seabed were shocked by what they saw
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As much as modern humans have explored our planet, many pockets remain challenging to investigate, such as deep in the jungles of South America or the depths of the global ocean. Thankfully, technological advancements, such as sonar, LiDAR, ground penetrating radar, and remotely operated underwater vehicles, make exploring these environments much easier.
Still, in addition to technology, sometimes luck is required to study Earth’s more mysterious locations, like beneath ice sheets. Such was the case for a team of international researchers who happened to be in the right place at the right time when an iceberg the size of Chicago broke away from an ice shelf, revealing 209 square miles (510 square kilometers) of seafloor that modern humans have never seen before.
Right Place, Right Time
In January 2025, scientists from Chilé, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States were sailing to Antarctica on the Falkor (too), a research vessel belonging to the Schmidt Ocean Institute.
They initially had three primary goals: to study the seafloor, the creatures living there, and any effects climate change has on Antarctic ice and the surrounding ecosystems.
However, their plans changed on January 13, 2025, when a massive iceberg, named A-84, broke away from the southern end of the even more ginormous George VI ice shelf in the Bellingshausen Sea along the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula — which happened to be near (though not dangerously near) the research vessel.
Measuring 11 miles (17 kilometers) wide and 19 miles (almost 30 kilometers) long, the A-84 iceberg is about the size of Chicago, Illinois. NASA satellite imaging shows it was carried off by coastal currents and sent “ricocheting” against parts of the Antarctic coastline.
News of the iceberg’s calving reached the Falkor (too) crew, who decided to ditch their original plans and jump on the opportunity to explore the seafloor where A-84 had been.
The opportunity is almost like investigating critters under a rock or log that’s been overturned. However, ice shelves are significantly larger, and it’s typically challenging, if not impossible, to see beneath them.
As Aleksandr Montelli, a geophysicist and glaciologist at University College London (UCL) and the expedition’s co-leader, pointed out in a statement,
“Ice shelves are among the most hostile and most remote environments on the planet, and they’re extremely difficult to get underneath.”
For the most part, the only way to see what’s beneath an ice shelf is when part of it happens to break off, and as Montelli states, “You cannot predict this calving and subsequent drifting with accuracy.”
You gotta look right after overturning a log to see what lifeforms are beneath, otherwise they’ll scatter soon after being exposed. So, when the A-84 iceberg broke off, the team dropped everything and hurried to take advantage of the rare opportunity, before too many potential lifeforms disappeared.
Montelli told Ashley Balzer Vigil of Scientific American, “There was a sense of going into a complete unknown.”