Imagine the surprise when scientists trolling with cameras 600 feet below an Antarctic ice sheet in the deepest, darkest, coldest ocean waters got an unexpected visitor — a tiny shrimp that packed a jumbo-size shock.
“We were operating on the presumption that nothing’s there,” said NASA ice scientist Robert Bindshadler, according to an AP story. “It was a shrimp you’d enjoy having on your plate. We were just gaga over it.”
In conditions so harsh and inhospitable that the common wisdom held only the most elemental microbes could survive, there appeared a three-inch long orange shrimp that swam by and attached itself to the camera lens equipment. And that wasn’t the only surprise on this video expedition.
Scientists also hauled up a tentacle that they believe once belonged to a foot long jellyfish. The discovery has excited debate about whether the shrimp and jellyfish actually reside in the sub-Antarctic environs or were just passing through. But biologists Stacy Kim of the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in California who was part of the NASA team doubts they are interlopers who could have traveled such a distance since the sighting is at least 12 miles from the open seas.
It’s not clear what their food source is or how they survive. What is more obvious, however, is the limits of our knowledge — and imagination. “It’s pretty amazing when you find a huge puzzle like that on a planet where we thought we knew everything,” Kim said.
Photo by Goddard Photo via Flickr.