As soon as the remotely operated camera glimpsed the bottom of the Weddell Sea, more than 1,000 feet below the icy ceiling at the surface, Lilian Boehringer, a student researcher at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, saw the icefish nests. The sandy craters dimpled the seafloor, each the size of a hula hoop and less than a foot apart. Each crater held a single, stolid icefish, dark pectoral fins outspread like bat wings over a clutch of eggs.
A research team has begun an €11-million (US$12.9-million) project with the hopes of collecting the oldest continuous ice core in Antarctica, providing a record of the climate spanning some 1.5 million years.
Researchers have come from 10 countries to Antarctica to begin the first stages of an ambitious plan drilling deeper into the ice than ever before to reach back 1.5 million years, and find key clues that could aid in the struggle with climate change.