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.

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 Institute release published on 20 March 2025, the team changed its expedition plan and reached the newly e…