Initially angered by the destruction of their equipment, the team soon became excited when they realised what lay beneath them. The crew first realised there was a reef beneath them when they lowered their equipment into the depths and it was smashed by the coral. In 2012, researchers stumbled across a deep coral reef while taking water samples 900m down off Cape Desolation on Greenland’s southern coast. The group used an under-water robot to explore the area and found “mats” of large amounts of microbial life.Ĭoral from the newly discovered reef off Greenland © Bedford Institute of Oceanography In 2007 researchers conducted the AGAVE (Arctic Gakkel Vents Expedition) mission, in which they discovered large amounts of pyroclastic volcanic deposits, which appear as glass-like structures on the sea floor. Hydrothermal vents are a hot-spot for sea organisms, with up to 100,000 times higher density of organisms than the surrounding ocean, and with those in the Gakkel ridge being so isolated from other oceans, these vents are likely to contain species found nowhere else on the planet. Despite this, the underwater mountain chain is where scientists found the first Arctic hydrothermal vents, only in 2003. It’s no surprise then that the darkest corners of the Gakkel Ridge remain largely unexplored. Running between Greenland and Siberia, the Gakkel ridge is the deepest mid-ocean ridge in the world, reaching depths of up to three miles. The Gakkel Ridge, in the Arctic Ocean between Greenland and Siberia © Universal History Archive/Getty Images