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How does life happen when there's barely any light?
Under the sea ice during the Arctic’s pitch-black polar night, cells power photosynthesis on the lowest light levels ever observed in nature.
Through photosynthesis, the particles of light power a cellular reaction that manufactures chemical energy (in the form of sugars), which is then passed around the food web in a complex dance of herbivores, predators, scavengers, decomposers and more. “People thought of the polar night as these desert conditions where there’s very little life, and things are all sleeping and hibernating and waiting for the next spring to come,” said Clara Hoppe, a biogeochemist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany. During spring bloom, an upsurge in photosynthesizing algae and other microbes kick-starts the Arctic ecosystem, fueling a yearly revel, with tiny crustaceans, fish, seals, birds, polar bears, whales and more.
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