Seafloor Sunday #87: Icebergs Plowing into the Seabed

Instead of the usual bathymetric map, here's a photograph for this week's Seafloor Sunday image. This is from the ocean floor in Antarctica in the region where the Larsen A and B ice shelves collapsed in 2002. The Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research conducted a research expedition aimed at investigating how life at the seafloor changed as a result of the ice shelf breakup. The irregular topography noticeable in the photo above is thought to be from icebergs plowing into the seafloor.

Here's a caption directly from the institute's web page about the expedition:

To understand the characteristics of the sea-floor inhabiting fauna in the formerly ice shelf covered Larsen area and the functioning of this ecosystem, the fauna outside Larsen was invesitaged as a kind of reference. At Seymour and, further North, Paulet islands a high intensity of disturbance by grounding icebergs was found.

Image: Life Below Ice Shelves / Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research