The sea anemone Bathyphellia margaritacea found directly below the North Pole now has the distinction of being considered the world’s most northerly species.

The living creature was collected by Russian explorers when they took two submersible vehicles under the pole to plant their country’s flag. That area of the Arctic Ocean has been hidden by a layer of permanent ice for more than 800,000 years, according to an article in the British newspaper The Guardian, North Pole sea anemone named most northerly species. 

Nadya Sanamyan, a biologist with the Pacific Institute of Geography in Kamchatka, part of the Russian Academy of Sciences, cautions against expecting more discoveries of living things under the Pole anytime soon: ”The video taken at the bottom of North Pole shows occasional shrimps and amphipods in the water, but they have not been collected and there are absolutely no chances to identify them. And I do not think that there are any chances to collect them in the coming decades. The dive under the ice of North Pole is too hazardous to be repeated.”

The Russian government made the dive in 2007 and sparked controversy among Arctic nations about territorial rights to minerals under the seabed. The divers also made scientific observations, shot video footage, and retrieved samples from the seabed.

The anemone was collected at a depth of 4,262 meters (13,982 feet) with a net attached to one of the two submersibles in the dive.

 In an article for the August issue of Polar Biology, the researchers point out that the B. margaritacea appears to be the only species of sea anemone that is able to range in the high Arctic up to the North Pole. Describing conditions at the sea bottom, they wrote: “The entire bottom at the point of the North Pole was covered by a thick layer of yellowish mud so fine that its superficial layer roiled from just the slightest movement of the submersible, or even its arm.”

“The environment was extremely poor with nutrients, low level of dissolved oxygen, absence of any water movement and very fine sediment on the bottom,” Sanamyan said. “The only living organisms visible there were these anemones and small crustaceans. Anemones are obviously on the top of food chain there.”

The newspaper notes the Russian scientists’ report comes as other researchers predict that ice around the North Pole could be heading for record-breaking lows this summer. The National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado says the melt rate for the first two weeks in July was faster than for 2008, though not as fast as for 2007, when Arctic sea ice reached its lowest recorded extent. The center said: “Sea ice researchers expect another low September minimum ice extent, but they do not yet know if it will fall below the 2007 record.”