Scientists hope damage to Larsen C ice shelf will reveal ecosystems

A team of scientists is planning an expedition to examine the marine ecosystem revealed when an enormous iceberg broke off the Larsen C ice shelf earlier this year.

In July, the iceberg known as A68 broke off the shelf, leaving the area at its lowest recorded extent. Researchers are now hoping the event may lead to novel revelations from their investigations of the area opened up, which had been hidden under ice for up to 120,000 years.

Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) will embark on the research ship RRS James Clark Ross in February 2018 to take the first look at the newly exposed ecosystems under the ice – if the conditions work in their favour.

“You can never predict the ice,” said mission leader Dr Katrin Linse. “There are still several hundred kilometres covered in sea ice which has to move and melt. Fortunately this often happens now during the Antarctic summer, so that is why we are hopeful for February.”

If everything works out, the scientists will have the chance to look at 5,800 sq km of sea floor that had been shielded for tens of thousands of years. Planning for such expeditions normally takes several years, but urgent funding schemes are available during such unpredictable natural events, like the volcanic activity over Iceland in 2010.

It is not the first time that scientists have been given the chance to take a look at these hidden marine worlds. After a similar iceberg broke off from the Larsen B shelf in 2002, a team of scientists set out to Antarctica, although it took much longer to get there.

Prof Dr Julian Gutt, a marine ecologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, was the first to lead a vessel to the area. He said: “We went to the area five years after it broke off. We had to try and learn what lived under the ice shelf when it still existed, so were never absolutely sure if our interpretation was correct.”

This presents a unique opportunity for the BAS team: “The Larsen C break-off is recent, so if the British scientists are successful – under the difficult conditions they are facing – they could really encounter a pristine situation,” says Gutt.

The BAS team expect to find organisms resembling those in deep-sea environments because of the areas’ similar conditions: a lack of nutrients, sunlight and wind.

A short timespan between the breakoff and research is crucial, says Linse.

“What Julian Gutt’s team found there five years after were already pioneer species, which slowly colonise the area. When we go this February, organisms will not have had enough time to settle down and adapt to their new environment,” she said.

The final decision on whether the project goes ahead will be made at the end of the year.