Chicago-Sized Iceberg Hid Ancient Ecosystem, Scientists Reveal

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Scientists scrutinizing the seafloor beneath a calving iceberg found a remarkable array of living creatures, switching up notions of how the giant chunks of ice affect their immediate environs. The scientists investigated a region of seafloor recently exposed by the calving of a gigantic iceberg -- A-84 -- which is as large as Chicago. The team found a surprisingly vibrant community of critters on the seafloor below where A-84 was once attached to an ice shelf attached to Antarctica.

Without the 197-square-mile (510-square-kilometer) iceberg in the way, the team was able to scrutinize the seafloor at depths of 4,265 feet (1,300 meters) using the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) SuBastian. The team found large corals and sponges supporting other lifeforms, including icefish, giant sea spiders, and octopus. [...] With the icebergs covering the seafloor, organisms below the shelf cannot get nutrients for survival from the surface. The team hypothesized that ocean currents are a critical driver for life beneath the ice sheets. The team also collected data on the larger ice sheet, whose shrinking size spells concern for the animals that live beneath it.

giant sea spiders

[Java Pimp]

They didn't need to mention that. Just sayin'.

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[CubicleZombie]

Great. One more thing to worry about when I go to the beach.

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[Can'tNot]

Well you got me curious, so I went lookin'. Here's [marinbiologene.no] a picture. They're not Shelob size, but that's still pretty big.

Here's [wikimedia.org] another picture. They're pretty neat. Not actually spiders though, the have their own order, Pantopoda, which means "all feet." I am amused to an appropriate degree.

Anything but metric?

[Carewolf]

So asteroids are measured in amounts of Texas's, but Icebergs in amount of Chicago's?

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[rossdee]

At least in the next paragraph they did give the area in square-kilometers.

But for comparison sizes they should use something that is pretty well defined rather than a city (do they include suburbs)

Re: Anything but metric?

[databasecowgirl]

Chicago never includes suburbs. Once you including suburbs, you're talking Chicagoland.

Chicagoland includes anywhere within the WGN broadcast area including over the air, satellite, cable, and internet.

An iceberg the size of Chicagoland would encompass the entire earth and beyond.

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[jools33]

Well there is more ice in Chicago in mid December than in Texas... I suppose, and more space rockets launched from Texas than Illinois... Here in the UK we use the measurement "The size of Wales" which I personally prefer and would highly encourage.

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[skam240]

Just remember there are about 33 Wales in 1 Texas and you'll be fine!

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[karmawarrior]

It's actually a much smaller size than people think from the name, they're not referring to a city, but to the popular pizza style. So it's about 12" wide, and 3" thick.

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[BinBoy]

In metric, it's 10.25 Manhattans.

Chicago

[pahles]

How many football fields is that?

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[Sique]

Chicago has an area about 600 square kilometers, so about 60,000 football fields.

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[Locke2005]

European football or American football?

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[Sique]

The size of both fields is more or less the same.

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[Tony Isaac]

They should have measured it in "Houstons" IMO.

The question I ask about any new critters:

[Locke2005]

What do they taste like? Mmmm.... seafood!

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[VampireByte]

I wonder if the critters are corrupt since the Chicago comparison was made. Maybe they are grifter critters.

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[dargaud]

It's not very difficult to imagine that an ecosystem that exists only under ice would be in jeopardy once the ice is gone. Or are you dense on purpose ?

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[argStyopa]

Is it hard to imagine that an ecosystem that developed under a dynamic surface, I dunno, may need its occasional disappearance to thrive?

You sound like the people that tried to stop all forest fires because "all the poor widdle animals would get burned up". That approach really panned out well, did it?

No, no, you're right: everything we discover and don't really understand, we should IMMEDIATELY declare it's an existential emergency and immediately intervene to stop (whatever political thing bothers us tod

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[argStyopa]

Is this where you pretend that you're fact based and I'm not?

Because that's LITERALLY A FACT.

"Earth's atmosphere is primarily composed of nitrogen (78%), oxygen (21%), argon (0.9%), carbon dioxide (0.04%), and trace amounts of other gases, including water vapor, which significantly influences atmospheric processes"

Source of nutrients?

[qwerty shrdlu]

There should be some nutrients, such as iron and various minerals, falling off the bottom of the iceberg, since that is the part of the glacier that was scraping and grinding the bedrock before the ice reached the sea. How much is an interesting question.

Biologists ... surprised again.

[fygment]

Biology is not a science. It is an observational vocation. Nothing wrong with that, just stop calling it a science.