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Glass sea sponges, called hexactinellids, grow extremely slowly in normal conditions and are often fixed in a state of dormancy for decades. Following the Larsen A ice shelf collapse in 1995, glass sponges in the Antarctic are now growing at a much more rapid rate.

In 2011, visiting scientists were surprised to see that the glass sponge forest had tripled in population and doubled in individual sponge biomass. They discovered that when the ice shelf collapsed, the increased amount of sunlight filtering into the water had caused the phytoplankton to thrive, which in turn had sparked a growth spurt among the plankton-eating sponges.

Read more and see a picture.