Awakening

IN NOVEMBER 2011 an American icebreaker, USCGC Healy, set off from Seward, Alaska, to sail north through the Arctic Circle into the Chukchi Sea. It was the beginning of the winter-long polar night. Sea ice was forming. The sun did not appear in the northern Chukchi for weeks. Those on board expected creatures to be sparse in number and entering hibernation. Instead, they found a ferment of activity.

Robert Campbell of the University of Rhode Island, one of Healey’s supercargo of scientists, outlined the details at Arctic Frontiers, a scientific conference held in Tromso, Norway, last month. His research, and that of his colleagues, showed that planktonic animals such as copepods (pictured above) and krill were abundant, active and grazing on the still smaller algae of the phytoplankton, themselves adapted to manage with the tiniest sliver of winter light. Instead of hibernating, they were developing. Larvae were turning into adults and a few species were even reproducing. This revelation of life in the middle of the polar night is one of many surprises of recent Arctic science. And that knowledge is changing people’s understanding of the world’s northernmost habitat.