Life inside the sea ice!

Believe it or not. Sea ice captures a whole community of organisms. Diatoms, green algae, flagellates and small copepods host small cavities and channels of sea ice. An entire food network from primary producers to decomposers lives in the icy environment.

Ice organism live both inside the ice and in pockets of saline solution that remain unfrozen because of high salinity. How to


Photo: Ilppo Vuorinen
stand the cold conditions? Ice microbes have a high content of margarine-like unsaturated and poly-unsaturated fatty acids that remain liquid in low temperatures. For some of them the icy conditions are not harsh at all – they even favour it.

3 comments

#3 Nikki 22.11.2011 04:21

Cool! I didn't know that

#2 Martti 25.03.2011 10:55

Quite new information to me.

#0 Martti 24.03.2011 10:27

Amazing!

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