{"id":862512,"date":"2026-06-12T15:59:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T15:59:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/862512\/"},"modified":"2026-06-12T15:59:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T15:59:14","slug":"scientists-tracked-these-strange-arctic-icebergs-and-found-something-unexpected-on-the-seafloor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/862512\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Tracked These Strange Arctic Icebergs and Found Something Unexpected on the Seafloor"},"content":{"rendered":"

A polar research expedition back in 2021 noticed something weird along the Fram Strait, a marine passage into the Arctic Ocean between Greenland and Svalbard. \u201cSome of the icebergs were carrying unusually large amounts of debris and looked almost black from above,\u201d as one biologist on the team, Melanie Bergmann, recalled<\/a> in a statement.<\/p>\n

This strange floating mystery has yielded a series of surprising discoveries along this Arctic region\u2019s ocean floor. Researchers led by Germany\u2019s Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) and the Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have documented thriving and entirely new ecosystems of soft coral, sea stars, \u201cmoss animal\u201d bryozoa, anemones, sponges, and more. These emerging habitats on the chilly Arctic seabed, the team argues in its new study<\/a>, appear to have been seeded by \u201cdropstones\u201d released from those craggy melting icebergs, creating the \u201chard substrate\u201d surfaces that sedentary marine animals have long adapted to colonize.<\/p>\n

But the research doesn\u2019t just show how sensitive these Arctic climes have become to the impacts of climate change. Their work may soon also be of use to sea vessels needing better data to navigate around this increasing number of icebergs calved from melting glaciers\u2014as well as from their dropstones, which pose risks in shallow waters if left uncharted.<\/p>\n

Marine biologist Bodil Bluhm at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, who was not affiliated with the team\u2019s research, described<\/a> the finds to Nature as a real \u201c\u2018wow\u2019 example for how incredibly connected different parts of our planet are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Floating islands <\/p>\n

Kirstin Meyer-Kaiser, a marine biologist at Woods Hole who collaborated on the new research, uncovered evidence that these dropstones have created new habitats via AWI\u2019s network of 21 undersea sensor stations in the strait, the Hausgarten<\/a> observatory. Satellite images of the rock-mottled icebergs, alongside deep-sea images from Hausgarten\u2019s network, slowly helped identify which recently melted icebergs had left a trail of geological debris across the ocean floor as they vanished into the sea.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere previously there were only isolated stones of various sizes, we are now finding much larger accumulations, frequently in small groups. And with each new stone, a permanent settlement is created on the seabed,\u201d Meyer-Kaiser said in a statement. \u201cAs a result, biodiversity in the deep sea is increasing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DeepCredit: Alfred Wegener Institute <\/p>\n

Chronological reconstructions via satellite traced the majority of these icebergs back to glaciers in northeastern Greenland and areas along the Russian High Arctic. But spotty satellite cover over those Russian glaciers, researchers said, prevented them from stating with confidence whether or not climate change has increased the creation of icebergs from those ice sheets.<\/p>\n

The data collected above Greenland, however, was considerably better, allowing the team to chart how glacial formations scooped up myriad rock formations only to ship those stones out to sea as the melting ice slid and cracked apart.<\/p>\n

The team also sampled stones from the Arctic\u2019s emerging dropstone habitats, confirming that their mineralogical composition matched stones on these icebergs.<\/p>\n

The tip about the iceberg <\/p>\n

According to sea ice physicist Thomas Krumpen, the study\u2019s lead author, there is value outside of marine biology and climate science in developing a better understanding of how icebergs are redistributing literal tons of rock from land to sea. His colleagues at AWI spun off a private company, in fact, Drift+Noise Polar Services, with the goal<\/a> of sharing \u201ctimely sea ice information,\u201d like iceberg hazards, with maritime customers.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn increasing presence of icebergs in certain regions of the Arctic harbours considerable risks, for example for cruise ships and cargo ships, which are travelling in ever greater numbers in the ice or near the ice edge, as well as for exploration activities for oil and gas,\u201d Krumpen explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs fishing moves further north,\u201d he added, \u201cnewly deposited stones in shallower areas could also become a risk for bottom trawling in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not unlike the strait\u2019s new soft coral habitats, these iceberg hazards are another example of the unintended ramifications of rising temperatures worldwide, Meyer-Kaiser noted: \u201cClimate change impacts our world in ways we never even thought of,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A polar research expedition back in 2021 noticed something weird along the Fram Strait, a marine passage into…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":862513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[8],"tags":[20774,126023,167690,258266,159,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-862512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-geology","tag-glacial-retreat","tag-icebergs","tag-marine-ecology","tag-science","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116737971744129774","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=862512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/862513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=862512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=862512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=862512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}