“It is very, very special.  The light is somehow pure. It is very difficult to put into words.”

Glaciologist Dr. Sasha Montelli has a clear and deep respect for Antarctica. He has traveled to the polar regions on three occasions, but that has not dimmed his awe.

Sasha is a 2019 Schmidt Science Fellow, and in February 2025, his research took him to the Bellingshausen Sea to the west of the Antarctic Peninsula as co-chief scientist onboard the Schmidt Ocean Institute research vessel R/V Falkor (too).

The 35-day research mission to the remote region of the Southern Ocean, west of Alexander Island, was meticulously planned, but sometimes fate still plays a hand in progress.

The interdisciplinary team’s objective was to create the first high-resolution maps of the hitherto unstudied seabed and its geological record of the ice sheet/ice shelf’s movements. 

The team also hoped to study the intricate ecosystems living at the interface between ice and the ocean cavities underneath. 

Just a few days into the cruise, the George VI ice shelf calved an enormous iceberg (A-84), exposing an area of seabed the size of Chicago to research for the very first time.

Sasha and colleagues quickly seized this serendipitous moment, and the crew navigated the ship to the now accessible region.

Their ability to research a newly exposed area so quickly was, as Sasha puts it, like lifting the ice shelf and looking underneath.

“Everything is so fresh, biology has not had time to adapt yet.

“We are, to the best of my knowledge, the first ones not only to be in the geographic area but also to explore the ecosystems which have been so recently exposed from a receding ice shelf, and in such a comprehensive manner,” he said.

“It is like being under an ice shelf, and ice shelves are among the most difficult and least accessible places on earth, and also very important.”

The team was able to collect sediment cores from the seabed and deployed ocean gliders and ROVs to understand how the currents interact with the ice shelf and investigate marine life.

The work will advance research on past ice-sheet dynamics, improve our models and predictions of future ice shelf movement, and help us better understand its impact on the Earth’s climate and Antarctica’s biodiversity. 

Or as Sasha puts it: “Understanding our past to better understand, and be able to predict, the future of the climate.”

The team has also been able to map areas of seabed that were covered by the ice shelf 20 years ago and 30 years ago, creating “time slices” of how ecosystems and the seafloor evolve on timescales from years to decades.  

They have been able to map the corrugation ridges engraved on the seafloor by the retreating fast-flowing ice streams, allowing daily rates of retreat to be inferred.

One of the highlights was imaging the bedrock strata from both mapping and remotely operated vehicle (ROVs) data, allowing geological setting to be very clearly characterized based on unique submarine investigations. The strata are completely obscured on land by hundreds of meters of ice.

The new data will now be analyzed by Sasha and the teams to glean fresh insights into the stability of the ice sheet, the associated deep-sea ecosystems, and how these systems will be potentially impacted by climate change.

The work is inherently interdisciplinary, bringing together biologists, glaciologists, oceanographers, and geophysicists, which Sasha credits as important for creating a richer understanding of the environment over multiple timescales.

His own interdisciplinary approach was supported by a Schmidt Science Fellowship in 2019, which allowed him to pivot from geophysics and geology to mathematical modeling.  During his fellowship, he worked on computational modeling and ice shelf projections.

He now combines these disciplines as he advances his research at University College London. 

This latest fieldwork has been carried out onboard R/V Falkor (too), operated by the Schmidt Ocean Institute.

The ship is a 110m state-of-the-art mobile research lab complete with 11 laboratories, sonar, echo sounders and seven over-the-side launch systems for scientific equipment including ROVs.

Sasha described the facilities and technology onboard the ship as “incredible”, but he was in no doubt as to its true value, the crew.

“From the engineers, to the galley, to the captain, the professionalism, dedication, and genuine, genuine desire to help us. I have never seen it before. They enable us to use the facilities to the fullest,” he said.

With the cruise complete, the work of analyzing the data has begun with the hope of new science being published.

But Sasha also appreciates the experience of one of the world’s most remote regions and the opportunity to be the first to conduct research in a region that was, until a few weeks ago, covered by the ice shelf.

“This fieldwork cannot happen every day or even every year,” he said.  “These are rare moments.

“It is very surreal, but [there is] also a sense of gratefulness for being granted the opportunity to make these discoveries.”

Sasha Montelli is a 2019 Schmidt Science Fellow and a lecturer at University College London.