December 14th, 2013 (Tim Radford). To the surprise of researchers, the warming waters of the fjords of the Antarctic Peninsula have an abundant and diverse population of marine life.

LONDON – Arctic fjords are poor places, low in marine life and muddied by glacial meltwater. In the southern ocean, where everything is upside down, it’s a different story. Scientists from the University of Hawaii report that they found unexpected riches deep in the fjords of the Antarctic Peninsula.

The Peninsula is one of the fastest-warming places on the planet. On land, researchers have used 150 years of moss growth as a kind of archive of change, and recorded a warming of 0.56°C per decade since the 1960s.

But researchers who photographed the sea floor found an abundance of bristle worms, sea spiders, sea cucumbers, crustaceans, jellyfish and of krill, they report in the journal PLOS One.

This is precisely…