Ice Melts in the Arctic, Some Deep-Sea Creatures Are Thriving

Ice melts in the Arctic, but a new study finds some deep-sea creatures may be thriving thanks to what icebergs leave behind. Scientists onboard the Polarstern were navigating the Fram Strait in 2021, between Greenland and Norway’s Svalbard, when they encountered a dark-rock-covered iceberg. A helicopter delivered the team onto the moving ice to take photos, samples, and measurements. Led by Polarstern researchers and published in Nature, the work links ocean warming to a sharp increase since the early 2000s in iceberg calving into the strait, and a subsequent rise in “dropstones” settling on the seafloor. Using 40 years of iceberg sightings and imagery from the Alfred Wegener Institute’s HAUSGARTEN observatory, researchers traced increased dropstones to higher iceberg frequency. When dropstones land, they can provide habitat for corals, sponges, and other invertebrates, offering new insight into how warming reshapes seafloor biodiversity.