Scientists surprised to see organism 'alive and moving' inside Arctic Ocean that they thought was dead

The icy region under the Arctic Ocean is known to trap an organism which scientists long believed turned dormant. Since the frozen region had caught it, one would assume the organism wouldn't remain active anymore. However, a new study has found that this is not the case. In fact, the vast community of these creatures is alive and even moving, Discover Wildlife reported. This is nothing but microscopic algae known as diatoms that line the frozen undersurface in the Arctic. The research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, states that despite being trapped inside ice, these algae haven't gone cold turkey. The study noted that temperatures in this region can drop as low as –15 degrees Celsius, yet this has not stopped the algae from being active. Also Read: Thousands of barrels with mysterious chemical found in the ocean in California cause major scare

The algae are mobile even in such harsh conditions. It further states that this is the lowest temperature ever recorded for movement by a eukaryotic cell, the type shared by plants, animals and fungi. This finding has shown that the algae play a vital role in the Arctic food web. Their mobility means they help transfer resources while managing to survive in one of the harshest regions on Earth. The research was carried out over 45 days at the Chukchi Sea in 2023 using the research vessel Sikuliaq. This sea is a small region in the Arctic Ocean, located between Russia and Alaska. The scientists retrieved ice cores from 12 research stations. A detailed analysis revealed that the algae were active within the ice. Also Read: 511 billion barrels of oil discovered in Antarctica can trigger World War. Here's how

What kept it alive in harsh sub-zero conditions?

They then replicated the icy environments and the micro channels that form when seawater freezes. The artificial environment was artificially controlled, and to their surprise, even there, the algae continued to glide. Lead author Qing Zhang, a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford, said, "You can see the diatoms actually gliding, like they are skating on the ice." Manu Prakash, associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford University and senior author of the study, added, "This is not 1980s-movie cryobiology. The diatoms are as active as we can imagine until temperatures drop all the way down to –15 degrees C, which is super surprising." Also Read: Scientists stumbled upon four pitch-black eggs 20,000 feet below ocean. They turned out to be...

What was keeping these diatoms moving in sub-zero conditions? To know what was happening, more experiments were carried out, which showed that a secretion similar to mucus was keeping them active. “There’s a polymer, kind of like snail mucus, that they secrete that adheres to the surface, like a rope with an anchor,” says Zhang.