Thousands of feet below the surface, the Antarctic seafloor is a time machine to another realm. “What happens at the frozen edge does not stay there," marine biologist and #NatGeoExplorer Cristian Lagger (laggercristian) points out. The Southern Ocean plays an outsized role in the health of our planet by absorbing more human-caused carbon dioxide than any other ocean and regulating the climate through its currents and seasonal ice. Little of the seabed has been studied and much remains unknown. Lagger is hoping to change that. During the National Geographic and Rolex #PerpetualPlanet Southern Ocean Expedition to the Weddell Sea, Lagger and his team collected samples from the seabed to help identify new species and analyze how much carbon they absorb to better understand its vast biodiversity and robust ecosystem. This work was conducted aboard the R/V Falkor (too) in collaboration with schmidtocean. They deployed the institute's SuBastian, a remotely operated vehicle, to gather cruc...