The Next Pandemic Is Under The Artic

Antarctica is popularly known for its lacerating winds, creatures that survive amidst raging tempests, and a frigid atmosphere where frosty mountains and ice sheets evoke wonder and unfamiliarity. But now, science foresees the future of the continent in a fearful way, one much warmer with barren seas and dying polar bears on its ice sheets. Due to climate change, its icy terrain is rapidly melting under the brazen sun; its once structured climate is now a fluid disaster. Recently, the gradual rise in temperature—the highest measurement this year at 64.9 degrees Fahrenheit—has led to an ecological consequence never seen before on its harsh terrain: its first non-native species.

When marine biologist Paulina Bruning dove into the 36-degree water of Antarctica’s Fildes Bay, a coastal region near the southern tip of South America, she was focused on collecting native coral and sea sponges. But back in the lab at King George Island, Bruning spotted an invader clinging to one of her specimens: several dozen juvenile mussels smaller than a pencil tip thriving on an orange sponge. That was unexpected—mussels aren’t native to Antarctica. In fact, until then, there had never been any evidence of those bivalve mollusks surviving in such cold water.

Bruning’s team sequenced the mussels’ DNA, concluding that they were a subset of Patagonian blue mussels most likely originating 500 miles north near South America. The mussels’ departure from the mellow subtropical waters around Patagonia to that of Fildes Bay was likely via ship to an area near the South Shetland Islands. The animals likely released their sperm and eggs in Antarctic water, where fertilization occurred. Burning’s team suggested that the orange sponge had cocooned the mussels from the freezing water as they grew into juveniles.

But this isn’t an accidental occurrence. Ships frequently pass through Antarctica since the 19th century as countries and travel agencies augmented their own economies via these freights. Mussels were commonly attached to these ships, especially those sailing through the Chilean and Patagonian waters where the mussels predominantly thrived. Still, it wasn’t until this year that researchers encountered a mussel colony, or any invasive colony, despite having gone on over 200 Antarctic expeditions.

What changed was the environment of Antarctica. “[Antarctica's] native biota has adapted to the region’s extreme conditions over many millions of years, making it one of the most biodiverse and special places on the planet. Antarctica is an isolated continent, but unfortunately, now with climate change and human activity, all natural barriers are being broken,” Bruning said. Between 2009 and 2017, Antarctica lost an average of 252 gigatonnes of matter a year, mainly in ice. Currently, its annual ice loss is six times greater than that of 40 years ago, a direct effect of its increasing temperature and varied seasonal fluctuations. But this dire present state foretells a desolate predicament for the future; one insight into imminent predictions occurred during the year 2016.

The children in Siberia anticipated many things for the summer of 2016, but what the Siberian community near the Arctic ice hadn’t foreseen was an epidemic sweeping across their communities. In places like Siberia, underneath the majority of the Arctic surface is a thawing ice layer known as the permafrost. When animals die on this surface, they don’t decompose. Rather, they freeze, becoming a part of the permafrost itself. When the 2016 heatwave occurred, the permafrost thawed rapidly, exposing a reindeer carcass infected with anthrax. The anthrax spores from the reindeer's body found their way into a top layer of soil before being picked up by thousands of migratory reindeer grazing in the area. More than 2,000reindeer soon contracted the deadly bacteria and passed it along to the nomadic people. A 12-year-old boy died, and at least 115 others were hospitalized by the end of August. That was the community’s first encounter with anthrax in 70 years.

It’s not just bacteria like anthrax that are appearing. The bodies of the 1918 influenza pandemic, a pandemic which many now compare to the current coronavirus pandemic, is still buried in the Arctic permafrost. And centuries after smallpox raged in the 1890s, the victims that had been buried have begun resurfacing. Within some of the corpses that lie lifeless in the permafrost is Yersinia pestis, the nasty bacteria that terrorized cities during the 16th and 17th centuries, claiming the lives of at least 50 million people. An eyewitness who lived during the plague that ravaged the city of Florence in 1348 described to Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio that “many ended their lives… and many others who died in their houses were only known to be dead because the neighbors smelled their decaying bodies. Most of them were treated in the same manner… [People were] more concerned with getting rid of the dead bodies than moved by charity [toward] the dead.” As the Arctic warms twice as fast as the rest of the world, its ground is starting to thaw. Microbes once buried in the permafrost could emerge from a long hibernation, haunting us with the dead.

There exists another indomitable challenge for the future as the permafrost thaws: there are microbes that have never been recorded before lurking in it. An ancient group of giant viruses, coined “pandoraviruses,” prevailed about 30 thousand years ago. In 2014, researchers successfully revived two of these ancient viruses, which were found 100 feet underground in the tundra along the coast. None of these viruses were able to infect humans. Well, not yet. Jean-Michel Claverie, a bioinformatics researcher at Aix-Marseille University in France involved in the study of these pandoraviruses, said, “There is now a non-zero probability that the pathogenic microbes that bothered [ancient human populations] could be revived and most likely infect us as well.” But if these viruses have been extinct for a long time, then our immune system is no longer prepared to respond to them. This unfamiliarity, likewise to that of the novel coronavirus, may just precede a harsh and severe immune reaction.

However, some are skeptical of a ravaging pandemic rising from the Arctic's ice. Curtis Suttle, a marine virologist at the University of British Columbia in Canada, said, "It is true that viruses will be archived in permafrost and glacial ice, but the probability that viral pathogens of humans are abundant enough and would circulate extensively enough to affect human health stretches scientific rationality to the breaking point."

Nonetheless, what we do know is that if the Arctic continues to warm as quickly as scientists are predicting, an estimated 2.5 million square miles of permafrost, about 40 percent of the world’s total amount, could disappear by the end of the century.

The daunting outcome of the compromised environment we live in is the beginning of an alarming future following a similarity to the current pandemic. But from China, Russia, and Norway blocking an Antarctic ocean sanctuary plan to a U.S. president that denies climate change, there is a desultory solution in the hands of our politicians to the consequences of climate change. As a nation, we face the risk of being unprepared again as we are with the current crisis. If there’s one thing we can learn from the virus currently ravaging communities around the globe, it’s that we need to prepare better before the next disaster strikes. And this undeniably includes combating global warming, which increases the frequency of disasters, before it's too late.

As for the mussels, their influence on the native fauna is uncertain. When Bruning and other researchers returned to Fildes Bay last summer, there was no sign of these tiny creatures. It seems that they may not have endured the brutal winter. Nonetheless, their appearance is a major warning that should not be disregarded as we fight against both the pandemic and the global warming crisis.