Exploration of Antarctic Subglacial Aquatic Environments: Environmental and Scientific Stewardship

Since 1970, radar, sonar, and other techniques have discovered more than 145 lakes underneath the ice of Antarctica, the largest about the same size as Lake Ontario. Rivers, streams, swamps, and other wetlands also exist, the water remaining liquid because of geothermal heat from below and the weight and insulation of ice from above. As of 2007, no one had drilled into any of these environments, and the Council was asked for ideas on how to investigate them without contaminating them. The most exciting prospect, of course, is that things are living down there, cut off from the rest of Earth’s environment for hundreds of thousands of years; new editions of H. P. Lovecraft are to be expected. There is no index.