John Priscu’s search for life that thrives under ice took him to subglacial lakes at the South Pole. Now he has his eye on Mars and Europa.

And there are sessile animals under the ice:

The researchers think it’s likely that the drift of this marine snow has been flipped on its side, so that the food source is moving horizontally instead of vertically. The researchers determined that there are productive regions 630-1500 km away. It may not be much, but it’s possible that enough organic material is riding these currents to feed these creatures. That’s an extraordinary distance, given that in the deepest part of the ocean, the Challenger Deep near Guam, marine snow produced at the surface has to fall 11 km down to reach the seafloor. To reach the animals on this Antarctic rock, food would have to travel as much as 133x that distance—and it would have to do so by floating sideways.

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