Just a day after having a festive Christmas last 2018, a group of scientists are hard at work in the vastness of Antarctica. They’ve just completed the task of cutting a deep hole into the ice, extending down into the subglacial lake.
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From there, they use their state-of-the-art equipment to take water samples. At this point, this was nothing but a routine procedure for them. But on this one particular day, they received the most surprising Christmas present.
Mercer Subglacial Lake
The Mercer Subglacial Lake is one of the most interesting lakes out there. It is covered by a sheet of ice roughly about 1,067 meters! For comparison, it is about ten times as tall as Big Ben. Just think about how massive that is!
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Despite freezing temperatures, the lake doesn’t actually freeze. This is because of the intense pressure coming from the ice. Now, very little is known about the Mercer Subglacial Lake. After all, it is 1,000 meters under ice. But it was the scientists’ job to investigate.
SALSA Expedition
This lake has been covered for more than a millennia, and scientists hoped to find something during the Subglacial Antarctic Lakes Scientific Access (SALSA) expedition. This was an expedition that would be groundbreaking.
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The expedition was made up of 50 scientists, drillers, and support staff. The main goal of this expedition was to determine how susceptible the ice sheet would be to global warming. And so they began their drill on the 26th of December.
The Drill Begins
The team knew various life forms were living in the lake. However, what they found that day left them completely surprised. They had come across something so unusual that it had the power to reframe their understanding of the lake altogether.
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According to one of the SALSA expedition members, David Hardwood, the discovery had been “fully unexpected.” What they found was something very ancient. In fact, it’s believed to be around half a billion years old!
Antarctica
With the entire country covered in thick sheets of ice, Antarctica is one of the chilliest and driest continents on the planet. The sheets of ice are at an average of 1.93 km deep. So, it doesn’t come as a surprise that the coldest period is more than -60°C.
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With the harsh conditions, living in Antarctica is impossible, which is why the continent has no human population. Scientists do “live” there to do some research, but these are mere settlements and never indefinite stays.
Knowing The Chilly Continent
Antarctica was even the last continent on Earth to be identified. In 1820, a group of Russian explorers had noticed it, but it took much longer before anyone set their foot there. Finally, in 1895, a group of Norwegians docked in the continent aboard the ship named Antarctica.
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It’s been more than a century since people first set foot in Antarctica and yet there is still so much more to learn. Its harsh conditions make it harder for scientists to conduct studies, but, thankfully, it is now easier thanks to modern technology.
Antarctic Treaty System
The Antarctic Treaty System was signed on December 1, 1959, by 12 countries whose researchers had been involved in studies in and around Antarctica. Since then, the agreement has expanded to 54 countries.
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The most important provisions of the treaty were: 1) Antarctica shall be used for peaceful purposes only; 2) Freedom of scientific investigation in Antarctica and cooperation toward that end…shall continue; 3) Scientific observations and results from Antarctica shall be exchanged and made freely available.
Research Bases
With this treaty taken into accordance, there are several scientific research bases established all around the continent. Depending on whatever season it is, the number of people present vary. For example, there are only around 1,000 people during summer, but in summer, the number could increase to 5,000.
Billy Collins
The continent is about 14.2 million square kilometres. However, its coastline has a length of around 24,000 kilometres. That is why it’s the 5th biggest continent on the planet. For comparison, it’s about 1.3 times the size of Europe.
Water Features
What’s more, Antarctica has numerous natural water features. After all, it holds 80% of the earth’s freshwater reserves. For example, we have the Onyx River which is 32.1km long. It’s a huge river, but the most significant water feature would be Lake Vostok.
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Lake Vostok is a subglacial lake situated beneath Russia’s Vostok Station. It measures 250 km long and 50 km wide with a surface area of 12,500 square km, thereby making it the 16th largest lake by surface area.
Helen Amanda Fricker
Aside from Lake Vostok, we have the aforementioned Lake Mercer. It was first discovered in 2007 by Helen Amanda Fricker, a glaciologist from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. She had been using satellite radar soundings while looking for the grounding line of a nearby glacier. Lake Mercer got its name from the Mercer Ice Stream, an ice stream beneath where the lake is located.
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Helen Fricker is part of the SALSA expedition. With this expedition, they hoped to understand its geological activity and figure out whether other life forms also existed in the lake. This was crucial information because the lake was situated deep under the ice.
Life Forms in Mercer Lake
Given the harsh conditions, it was interesting to see how organisms lived in the water, especially since this was an environment that never saw the light of day. Since a lot of organisms rely on photosynthesis for their energy, it was interesting to see how these creatures did that.
Dr Huw Griffiths
To explain it more properly, photosynthesis is a process that creates sugar and oxygen from carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight. See, without sunlight, it was able to produce oxygen and sugar. Photosynthesis is important for plants and algae because it regulated the earth’s oxygen levels.
Exploring More
However, there are actually other microorganisms that do not depend on sunlight for survival, such as those that are found in subglacial lakes. These organisms instead use matter found in the lake, such as those found in rocks.
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To this day, scientists still haven’t fully understood those subglacial environments and how these organisms survived. After all, it’s not exactly the most accessible. Before the SALSA expedition, only one other subglacial lake had been explored, Lake Whillans.
Beginning Their Study
By conducting the SALSA expedition, the team hoped to increase their knowledge of subglacial life. A deeper understanding could lead to bigger scientific implications. So, in December 2018, the SALSA team began to set up above Lake Mercer.
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After four days of setting up their equipment, they began their drilling operations on December 23. After just three days of cutting through the ice, they unexpectedly reached the lake after having cut through more than 1,066 meters.
December 27
By December 27, the team was ready to explore the lake. With their high-end technology, they managed to capture some footage of the lake’s waters. Although the lake is submerged kilometres down the surface, it’s actually double the size of Manhattan.
Billy Collins
SALSA’s team leader, John Priscu, said to the website Earther over a satellite phone from Antarctica, “We don’t know what we’ll find. We’re just learning, it’s only the second time that [an operation of this nature] has been done.”
Experimenting
With the ice now pierced through, the team was able to begin analysing the lake. Aside from recording a video of what’s in the lake, they also measured the water temperatures and took various simples.
Billy Collins
They retrieved samples from the lake, such as sediments from the bottom and the ice from the top. However, despite all having taken their samples, it seemed as if this project wasn’t going to end anytime too soon.
Analysing Their Observations
You see, it would take some time because their samples will be analysed for the coming years. Despite all their tech, this was unexplored territory, so they needed to be sure with their findings. For Matt Siegfried, one of the scientists on the team, this was normal procedure.
Brent Christner
Matt Siegfried told the Earther, “We’re knee-deep right now [now] sampling the deepest standing water body humans have ever accessed beneath Antarctica. [So] it’ll take some time to process what the most exciting part [is].”
A Discovery
Despite the long wait, there have actually been some findings. By mid-January 2019, just less than a month after the expedition, the journal Nature published an article. In this article, it seems that the SALSA team had discovered life forms in the lake.
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The researchers discovered preserved tiny animal carcasses under the ice. But what was most intriguing was that these animal carcasses were found to be tardigrades. Tardigrades are otherwise known as water bears.
Tardigrades
Tardigrades are eight-legged micro-animals. They were first observed by the German zoologist August Ephraim Goeze. They are sometimes called water bears because they look like tiny bears and their walk resembles that of the animal’s.
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When fully developed, tardigrades tend to grow up to a little more than 0.02 inches in length. They belong to a category for extremophiles, or creatures that can survive in the harshest conditions. Therefore, they are considered amongst the toughest animals on earth.
More About Tardigrades
Indeed, tardigrades can be found in all environments and come out unscathed. They can survive in temperatures at absolute zero, in boiling temperatures, or the ocean’s deepest trenches. It was even found that they can survive the vacuum of space!
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Yet despite these facts, researchers were still surprised to discover tardigrades living in Lake Mercer. Before, it was believed that only simpler organisms could survive in the lake. With the presence of tardigrades, it seems more complex life forms could survive in this environment.
Speculating Theories
The researchers speculated about where these microorganisms could have come from. They believed the tardigrades to have a resemblance to lifeforms that lived in wet soils. On the other hand, the crustaceans were believed to come from either the ocean or icy lakes.
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One theory about their origins is that they used to inhabit the waters close to the Transantarctic Mountains. But this was estimated to be ten or twelve thousand years ago when the continent was warmer. As it got colder, then the animals also got covered in ice.
How Did They End Up There?
How the tardigrades ended up at Lake Mercer is a question that still has no answer at the moment. Although it might help if the SALSA researchers manage to estimate how old these organisms are. From there, they could begin to better understand Antarctica’s history.
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Other experts have given their reactions, too. For example, University of California glaciologist Slawek Tulaczyk said, “This is really cool. It’s definitely surprising.” Tulaczyk was involved in the study of Lake Whillans.
Careful Claims
Tulaczyk suggested that the tardigrades may have ended up in the lake after being carried over by the rivers. Alternatively, it could have been swept there by a glacier that was floating away from the nearby mountains.
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Researchers are careful about making claims this early though. John Priscu said the tardigrades might have merely appeared due to a contamination from their instruments. He said, “I’m pretty cautious about making claims.” Regardless, it would still be a “real wow moment” if the creatures actually came from Lake Mercer.
Closing The Hole
On January 5, 2019, the SALSA team sealed up the hole they had created and left the site to continue with their analyses. From there, they took their time analysing the various samples they had taken from Lake Mercer.
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With new high-end technology, they might be able to shed some light on the makeup of these creatures. For now, there are still many questions surrounding the discovery at Lake Mercer. In fact, it’s possible that more organisms still live there to this day.
Next Time
The good thing is, our scientists have already made some progress in their quest to understand the history of Antarctica better. With just a small sample, we might even make some groundbreaking discoveries.
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Antarctica is a huge source of much of everyone’s curiosity. It’d be interesting to see the progress our researchers make in the next ten years. We could be in for a real treat if they manage to gather more information about the continent.