BALTIMORE — In the frigid waters around Antarctica, below the floating ice shelves where all is dark, lives a most unlikely creature: a perky little shrimp-like crustacean.
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Scientists spotted the animal, known as an amphipod, frolicking in a hole drilled through the ice in late 2009. They had come to Windless Bight, not far from Antarctica’s McMurdo Station, to test drilling equipment for a future study of ice shelves. But biology turned out to be a bonus.
“Everybody was just gaga over this amphipod,” says team leader Robert Bindschadler, a polar scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “He put on quite a show,” swimming around and nestling up against the cable carrying the underwater camera.