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This is Science Friday. I'm Irafledo.

Today on the podcast, how a little luck and great timing helped scientists see under an Antarctic ice sheet.

We knew that there is life under ice shells, but it was extremely surprising the degree

to which life was thriving, diverse, colorful.

In January, an iceberg, the size of Chicago, splintered off from the Antarctic Peninsula and

drifted away in the Belling's Housen Sea. As luck would have it, a team of scientists was nearby

on a research vessel, and the scientist seized the chance to see what was lurking on the

seafloor beneath that iceberg, a place that had long

been covered and nearly impossible to reach. They found a stunning array of life, octopuses,

sea spiders, crustaceans, and possible clues into the dynamics of ice sheets.

Joining me are the expeditions to chief scientist.

Dr. Patricia Esquete is a marine biologist at the University of Aviro in Portugal,

Dr. Sasha Montelli, glaciologist, and geophysicist at University College London.

Welcome both of you to Science Friday.

Thank you for having us.

Thank you. Sasha, you happen to be Friday. Thank you for having us. Thank you.

Asasha, you happen to be in the right place at the right time. Tell us about what your

original mission was. Our science agenda was merged from two different proposals. One was

Patricius, another was mine. Patricius' agenda was mostly biological investigations of this very poorly investigated

areas of Antarctic Peninsula. And my team was aiming to discern the ice ocean interactions,

the melting of ice on a range of timescales from tens of thousands of years to industrial era to the present.

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