《《Abundant Life Under the Ice》.docx

Abundant Life Under the IceExtreme LifePosted: 06/10/12 Summary: Researchers have discovered a massive bloom of phytoplankton beneath ice-covered Arctic waters. The amount of phytoplankton was four times greater than the amount found in ice-free waters.  U.S. Coast Guard rescue swimmers and polar bear sentinels from the USCGC Healy stand by as scientists measure sea ice properties during NASAs 2011 ICESCAPE cruise. Samples of sea ice and the underlying seawater were taken aboard the USCGC Healy, where WHOI biological oceanographer Sam Laney and MIT/WHOI Joint Program student Emily Brownlee used a seagoing Imaging FlowCytobot to determine what species of algae live in and below Arctic sea ice. Credit: Photo by Sam Laney, Woods Hole Oceanographic InstitutionA team of researchers, including scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), discovered a massive bloom of  HYPERLINK /blog/?p=1164 phytoplankton beneath ice-covered Arctic waters. Until now, sea ice was thought to block sunlight and limit the growth of microscopic marine plants living under the ice. The amount of phytoplankton growing in this under-ice bloom was four times greater than the amount found in neighboring ice-free waters. The bloom extended laterally more than 100 kilometers (62 miles) underneath the ice pack, where ocean and ice physics combined to create a phenomenon that scientists had never seen before. The study, published June 8 in the journal Science, concluded that ice melting in summer forms pools of water that act like transient skylights and magnifying lenses. These pools focused sunlight through the ice and into waters above the continental shelf north of Alaska, where currents steer nutrient-rich deep waters up toward the surface. Phytoplankton  HYPERLINK /roadmap under the ice were primed to take advantage of this narrow window of light and nutrients. “Way more production is happening under the ice than we previously thought, in a