Back in July 2017 , long after a fling began propagate through a slither of Antarctica , a monumental crisphead lettuce calved from the Larsen C Ice Shelf . Drifting out into the Southern Ocean , it not only cater researchers with a close - up view of this spectacular process , but a opportunity to see what lay below : an ecosystem that ’s been shield from sunlight and the surface for around 120,000 years .
The expedition will set off from the Falkland Islands on February 21 , and it ’ll spend three weeks probe beneath the waves .
This is n’t just a slight nook or cranny that ’s been revealed , by the way . According to apress releaseby the BAS , it ’s 5,818 square kilometre ( about 2,250 square miles ) in size , which is about 7.4 times that of New York City . A plethora of new species is likely to be discovered during this particular speculation , but , rather significantly , this expedition is also a race against time .
Although change to the ecosystem would have always been happen as it remained under the cover of dark , the rapid removal of its icy ceiling mean that it ’s now experiencing wakeful levels that have been far lower for hundreds of millennia . The environs it once was has now been fundamentally spay at a noteworthy pace , and as the iceberg continues to drift away , those light levels will only rise further .
Part of the rush to see the novel ecosystem , then , is n’t just to light upon the species that call it home but to study how everything changes and adapts to the new environmental government . Will any species die out , and what invaders will begin to colonize the seafloor afresh ?
BAS marine biologist Dr Katrin Linse , the leader of this young expedition , explain that they ’ve “ put together a team with a all-encompassing reach of scientific skills so that we can pull in as much data as possible in a short time . It ’s very exciting . ”
This junket is actually making history . There have been plenty of similar journey to Antarctica in the past , but this is the first to head into an areaprotectedunder a steel - new international arrangement . Conceived in 2016 by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources , it give newly exposed areas like this in Antarctica a special scientific conservation condition .
