March 17th, 2010 
A pretty cool little discovery! Amphipod hanging out down below 600 feet of ice in an isolated Antarctic basin. Is it lost?? What are you doing there amphipod!? Of course this begs the question of where the heck is it getting its food from? Vents under the ice? Plesiosaur falls from a lost world?
At a depth of 600 feet beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet, a small shrimp-like creature managed to brighten up an otherwise gray polar day in late November 2009. This critter is a three-inch long Lyssianasid amphipod found beneath the Ross Ice Shelf, about 12.5 miles away from open water. NASA scientists were using a borehole camera to look back up towards the ice surface when they spotted this pinkish-orange creature swimming beneath the ice. Credit: NASA
[...] NASA climate researchers have discovered animal life deep below the Pine Island Glacier Ice Shelf in Antarctica. The researchers drilled a hole six-hundred feet deep and eight inches wide into the glacial ice sheet about twelve miles from the open ocean. When they lowered a camera below the ice sheet, the scientists were surprised to see a Lyssianasid amphipod crustacean swim up and park on the cable. The researchers were only expecting to find microbial life under the ice sheet this far in from the open ocean. It is unknown what the primary energy source for animals living here could be. The presence of a three-inch amphipod, however, suggests a much more elaborate and dynamic ecosystem than hypothesized in this poorly understood habitat. (DSN has a video of the amphipod) [...]
I’m a little confused about why they _didn’t_ expect to find anything. Why shouldn’t the underside of a 600-foot-thick ice shelf have critters?
I totally agree. It was disconnected to open water though. But lets be honest here, we’ve found metazoan life some frikkin strange places! Besides, give NASA a break they are just trying to get excited about something on Earth ;p
I was expecting that abrupt scary video of Linda Blair to come flying out during the very last second of the video.
Honestly, I am with Karen on this one, I fail to understand what make this special? What are we missing?
If they had turned the camera around, they would discover that the sea bed here is crawling with life like this little fella. Thas has been known by Norwegian marine biologists – and others – for decades. NASA obviously has a lot to learn…
LOL I was thinking the same thing about the camera. Especially at the end of the video where the camera does go under the ice. Need to send an auv down there and map it out. Probably some hydrothermal vents on a little ridge system down there, much like the Arctic up your way.
I have something inside my body eating me & I’ve been diagnosed with an arthropod bite. I have these jelly-like feeders in my body & on my skin.. it has all Dr.’s confused. No one can seem to figure this out…I also can see where it has molded itself in the wood around my house. Can you help me? Desperately seeking answers
Does anyone know how long the glacier has been there or how long this lake has been cut off from the sea. I would assume that this is a fresh water species. How many terestrial or fresh water animal species are endemic to antartica? Did penguins(Sphenisciformes) evolve in antarctica? Is this little criter the last living endemic animal of the whole continent. Antartica used to be teaming with life before the continent moved south to it’s present location. just a thought