When an iceberg roughly the size of Chicago broke away from Antarctica’s George VI Ice Shelf in January 2025, researchers diverted their ship to the newly exposed seafloor — and found a hidden world of sponges, anemones, sea spiders and octopuses that may have been thriving in darkness for hundreds of years.

On 13 January 2025, an iceberg named A-84 broke away from Antarctica’s George VI Ice Shelf, opening a section of seafloor that had been sealed beneath floating ice. The timing was unusually fortunate. A research team aboard Schmidt Ocean Institute’s R/V Falkor (too) was already working in the Bellingshausen Sea. According to a Schmidt Ocean [...] The post When an iceberg roughly the size of Chicago broke away from Antarctica’s George VI Ice Shelf in January 2025, researchers diverted their ship