Santa Cruz scientists to drill through Antarctic ice to hidden lakes

SANTA CRUZ — The last unexplored water environment on Earth is about to be explored.

In two years, glaciologist Slawek Tulaczyk and two dozen explorers will lug 500,000 pounds of drilling equipment to Antarctica and pierce snow-dusted ice caps to uncover virgin water half a mile below.

It will be the first time anyone has drilled below the western Antarctic ice sheet to these sub-glacial lakes, which scientists think are teeming with robust microbes sheltered from the sun for 36 million years.

“It’s just like being on another planet,” Tulaczyk said.

Tulaczyk and his UC Santa Cruz research team will submerge cameras and pressure-sensitive monitors into hidden lakes that buoy fragmented ice sheets out to sea. For four months, they will measure how quickly ice caps are breaking apart and dumping into the ocean, work funded by a recent $10 million stimulus grant from the National Science Foundation.

It’s bonus for the climate change research team that they will dip into waters never seen by mankind.

“Finding new microbial life would be amazing,” Tulaczyk said.