In February 2021, the research icebreaker RV Polarstern discovered the most extensive fish breeding colony discovered to date, at ~500 m depth below the Weddell Sea sea ice. The colony was found to cover at least 200 square kilometers of seafloor. 12,020 active nests were imaged within 2,145 images. Seal tracking data seem to indicate that Weddell Seals feed on these fish, diving to the depths of the nests repeatedly.
Check out the paper at http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)01698-5.
A. Purser, L. Hehemann, L. Boehringer, S. Tippenhauer, M. Wege, H. Bornemann, S.E.A. Pineda-Metz, C.M. Flintrop, F. Koch, H.H. Hellmer, et al. (2022). A vast icefish breeding colony discovered in the Antarctic. Curr. Biol. 32.
And read more great research at http://www.cell.com/current-biology/home.
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