What do you think lies in the depths of the Arctic Ocean? Just a lot of very, very cold water, right?

Wrong? There is thriving life, a vibrant ecosystem.

A multinational research team led by UiT The Arctic University of Norway, working as part of the Ocean Census Arctic Deep — EXTREME24 expedition, investigated the depths of a certain point in the ocean, barely 1,200 km from the North Pole. There, at depths of 3,640 m, are tiny mounds of gas hydrates, or iced methane. (Methane rises from below the earth’s crust, meets the cold seawater and crystallises into ice — gas hydrates.) These mounds are called methane seeps.

Below the point in the Arctic (79 degrees North and 3 degrees East) lies a methane hydrate formation called ‘Freya Hydrate Mounds’. The temperatures are very close to zero and, as you can imagine, it is very dark at such depths. There — in such an inhospitable environment — exists a world that we can only imagine.

It’s a world of chemosynthetic creatures — organisms that depend not on sunlight but methane and hydrogen sulphide for food. At the bottom of the food chain are bacteria that ‘eat’ methane (methanotropic). They form dense microbial mats — often white, grey or orange — on hydrate surfaces and seep sediments. These microbes are the primary producers, playing the role of plants on land. Other creatures — such as siboglinid tubeworms, maldanid worms, amphipods and snails — form a food chain, and you do find some fish and eel too.

After documenting this strange world, the researchers stress that this ecosystem must be protected from human activities such as deep-sea mining, so that we do not stale Nature’s infinite variety.

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Published on December 29, 2025