Strange Sea Creatures Found in Antarctica
By Deborah Zabarenko
Reuters
WASHINGTON (Feb. 25) – Spindly orange sea stars, fan-finned ice fish and herds of roving sea cucumbers are among the exotic creatures spied off the Antarctic coast in an area formerly covered by ice, scientists reported on Sunday.
This is the first time explorers have been able to catalog wildlife where two mammoth ice shelves used to extend for some 3,900 square miles over the Weddell Sea .
At least 5,000 years old, the ice shelves collapsed in two stages over the last dozen years. One crumbled 12 years ago and the other followed in 2002.
Global warming is seen as the culprit behind the ice shelves’ demise, said Gauthier Chapelle of the Polar Foundation in Brussels.
Here is the full article.
Am I correct in assuming these icy waters were unreachable before the collapses of the shelves? If there are other such unexplored areas, it will be interesting to see what manner of life they will yield.
And they say global warming is a bad thing.
Well these creatures are now subject to extinction. Maybe they need the ice cover to survive.