They were searching for a legendary ship at the bottom of the Antarctic Ocean and stumbled upon something entirely different
The area remained hidden under ice until the calving of iceberg A68 allowed access.
A team of UK scientists discovered a vast fish colony in the Weddell Sea, Antarctica, in 2019, which could be the largest ever recorded. The findings were published this Wednesday in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science.
The main goal of the expedition had been to locate, map, and capture images of the Endurance, the historic ship from Shackleton’s 1915 expedition that sank in the same area.
However, during their research, the team uncovered a previously hidden region that had been sealed beneath a thick layer of ice until iceberg A68 broke away, granting access to it.
In this newly exposed area, they found more than 1,000 fish nests arranged in precise geometric patterns on the seabed. The researchers noted that such formations had never been observed before, as the nests were grouped in clusters, lines, and curves resembling underwater neighbourhoods.
“In the surveyed area, over a thousand nests were documented, each containing eggs and adult fish guarding them, all in areas cleared of marine debris,” the researchers reported.
The study was led by scientists from the University of Exeter’s School of Life Sciences and Centre for Conservation and Biodiversity, in collaboration with the Nekton Foundation, the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, and specialists from the Ocean Census organisation.
Only a few fish species are known to build nests, such as cichlids, sticklebacks, gobies, and certain Antarctic species. These structures help increase the survival rate of their young by providing shelter from predators and creating better conditions for egg development.
The search for Shackleton’s lost ship Endurance has uncovered another treasure in the Antarctic deep - more than a thousand geometric fish nests on the seafloor.
— University of Essex (@Uni_of_Essex) October 29, 2025
Russ Connelly of @EssexLifeSci analysed hours of footage to identify the nesting patterns.https://t.co/N3lYv89tzl pic.twitter.com/o6BclSTlgL
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Thanks to this Weddell Sea expedition, researchers were able to study the fish’s reproductive behaviour and understand how they organise their nests under such extreme environmental conditions.
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