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These Plants Photosynthesize Deep in the Arctic Even When There’s No 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.
“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. In early 2020, Hoppe found herself testing the limits of photosynthesis directly, camped aboard an icebreaker ship that had been deliberately rammed into an ice floe and allowed to drift with its engines off through the polar night.
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