North Pole Sea Anemone Survives Beneath The Pole
Call it the ultimate northerner. A tiny sea anemone has been named the world's most northerly species after being discovered clinging to life directly below the frozen crust of the north pole.
The hardy creature was scooped from the Arctic seabed by Russian explorers during their 2007 submersible voyage, during which they planted Russia's flag beneath the north pole to highlight its territorial claim to the oil-rich region.
The anemone is the first living thing to be formally identified in the waters directly beneath the pole, which have been hidden by a layer of permanent ice for more than 800,000 years.
"This is the only identified species from that region," said Nadya Sanamyan, a biologist with the Pacific Institute of Geography in Kamchatka, part of the far-eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
"The video taken at the bottom of North Pole shows occasional shrimps and amphipods in the water, but they have not been collected and there are absolutely no chances to identify them. And I do not think that there are any chances to collect them in the coming decades. The dive under the ice of North Pole is too hazardous to be repeated."
