A new survey of the depths of the ice-capped Arctic Ocean could reveal a world of living fossils and new species from jellyfish to giant squid, scientists said on Thursday.
The international scheme will include probing a 3,800m abyss off Canada described by project leaders as the "world's oldest sea water -- a vast, still pool unstirred for millennia, walled by steep ridges and lidded with ice."
Scientists in the University of Alaska-led project plan to use robot submarines and sonar to track down life where they say many species may be at risk from global warming.
"This is the world's refrigerator, where change has happened far more slowly than in other oceans," said researcher Russ Hopcroft of the University of Alaska, saying the census could double the number of species known in the Arctic.
The research is part of a $1 billion, 10-year global Census of Marine Life (CoML) funded by governments, companies and private donors. The Arctic survey got a $600,000 start-up grant from the private US Alfred Sloan Foundation on Thursday.
Ron O'Dor, chief scientist of the 53-nation CoML, speculated that Arctic waters might hide creatures now known only from fossils, such as trilobites, which flourished 300 million years ago.
He said the researchers might find new types of jellyfish, giant squid or new plankton and algae species in the barely surveyed ocean. "And this may be a last window of opportunity to study the Arctic because of climate change," he said.
More southerly species may invade Arctic waters if the polar icecap melts, while increased shipping could accidentally introduce new creatures to the region in ballast water, disrupting its long-unchanged ecology, he said.
UN models say that the Arctic could be largely ice-free in summer by 2100 because of global warming, blamed mostly on emissions of gases from cars, power plants and factories.
About 7,000 species are already known from Russian-led surveys in the Arctic Ocean. "Anything that's fast enough to move out of the way may have been missed by previous surveys," focused on sampling water or sediments, Hopcroft said.
Arctic waters, almost freezing year-round, are unlikely to hide unknown commercial stocks of fish.
The 3,800-meter-deep Canada Basin is a mystery because it is cut off from deep waters in the Pacific by the 70-meter-deep Bering Strait and from currents from the more distant North Atlantic by 1,400-meter-deep ridges and straits.
"This water has been isolated more than any other part of the world's oceans, including around Antarctica," said Bodil Bluhm of the University of Alaska.
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