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Deep sea ecologist Autun Purser was part of an international expedition with the Alfred Wegener Institute鈥檚 Deep Sea imaging team, investigating how life on Antarctica's seafloor is changing, when they discoverd a huge icefish colony. They came across the vast 鈥渕etropole鈥� of nesting icefish when they smashed a hole through the permanently frozen Weddell Sea in Antarctica. Nobody had seen a fish nest colony anywhere near this size before.

The icefish nests are about 75cm wide and made mostly with small stones eroded from the Antarctic glaciers. While the female icefish will lay around two thousand eggs in a nest, scientists believe it鈥檚 the male who is left to guard them from all sorts of predators like sea spiders, octopi, other fish and seals.

鈥淲e saw absolutely nothing but nest after nest after nest, 鈥� says Autun, 鈥淭hey looked like hotel rooms booked by this particular fish.鈥�

Photo: Some of the icefish nests, found in Antarctica Credit: Alfred Wegener Institute