A team of scientists from New Zealand began the two-month expedition in November last year. A ski-mounted Twin Otter aircraft ferried them 220 miles from their base to the middle of the Ross Ice Shelf — the massive slab of ice and snow, that hangs off the coastline of West Antarctica, floating in the ocean. The researchers then assembled a huge machine capable of generating a powerful jet of hot water, which they used to make two narrow holes more than 1,100 feet, or 335 metres deep.
They then lowered cameras and other instruments through the holes, into the waters below, hoping to find out how secure the ice is.
Scientists fear that some of these ice shelves are already weakening due to climate change and so they hoped to assess the health of the Ross Ice Shelf by measuring water temperature beneath it.
However, the surprises began almost as soon as the camera was lowered into the first hole.
The undersides of ice shelves are usually smooth due to gradual melting, but as the camera passed through the bottom of the hole, it showed the underside of the ice adorned with a glittering layer of flat ice crystals.
This was evidence that in this particular place, sea water is actually freezing onto the base of the ice instead of melting it.
Christina Hulbe, a glaciologist from the University of Otago in New Zealand, told National Geographic: “It blew our minds.”
The Ross Ice Shelf is considered more stable, at present, than many of West Antarctica’s other floating shelves and this observation could help explain that.
Under the ice shelf “is a huge amount of ocean, it’s the volume of the North Sea” between England and Norway, said Hulbe, “and there are almost no measurements there”.
As a result, the team has installed instruments in one of their holes that will monitor ocean currents and water temperatures under the ice for the next two years or so, beaming that information home via satellite link.
The new project could also cast light on some lingering suspicions—that even though the Ross Ice Shelf seems stable today, it has actually undergone some dramatic collapses in the recent past.
It comes after the Expedition Antarctica team began scanning the waters around the icy continent, before discovering “creatures”.
On board New Zealand’s research vessel RV Tangaroa, an international team used state-of-the-art technology to look at the seabed.
The Aegis imaging system allowed scientists to capture fascinated images like nothing seen before.
While the mission is still ongoing, “The Secrets of Antarctica” documentary was released on YouTube in July revealing the amazing finds to date.
The narrator explained: “Like an explorer dispatched to a foreign world, the imaging system begins its fact-finding mission and scientists hold their breath.
“Nobody really knows what’s down here.
“To marine biologists, this is big, like the first Moonwalk.
As the live video images come up from the seabed, the scientists log what they see and strain to find things they’ve never seen before.”
The documentary then showed a seabed bursting with activity.
The narrator concluded: “They will crawl for an hour, the length of a videotape.
“Giving the team their first tantalising image of polar marine life in perpetual nighttime.
“There’s quite a lot of fragments of things here on that.
“Now they’ve seen the creatures on the video they want to get their hands on them.”