8/30/2023 0 Comments Unknown creatures“It sinks to the sea bottom and pushes water outward, radiating outward from the Antarctic,” says Mooi. As seawater cools in the region, it grows more dense. Given what scientists know about currents around Antarctica, this isn’t particularly far-fetched, says Rich Mooi, curator of invertebrate zoology and geology at the California Academy of Sciences, who has studied Antarctic sea life but wasn’t involved in this new work. To reach the animals on this Antarctic rock, food would have to travel as much as 133 times that distance-and it would have to do so by floating sideways. ![]() That’s an extraordinary distance, given that in the deepest part of the ocean, the Challenger Deep near Guam, marine snow produced at the surface has to fall 7 miles down to reach the seafloor. It may not be much, but it’s possible that enough organic material is riding these currents hundreds of miles to feed these creatures. ![]() Looking at charts of currents near the drill site, the researchers determined that there are productive regions between 390 and 930 miles away. The researchers think it’s likely that the drift of this marine snow has been flipped on its side, so that the food source is moving horizontally instead of vertically. ![]() At bottom left, you can see stalked animals.
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