“Brinicle” Ice Finger Of Death Caught On Tape In The Antarctic Ocean

“Brinicle” Ice Finger Of Death In The Antarctic Ocean

Death’s finger has finally been caught on tape as it descended in the cold waters of the Antarctic Ocean and imprisoned in a tomb of ice, every living creature on the bottom of the ocean. How is this possible you ask? Well, specialists took advantage of moder timelapse cameras and managed to record salt water being excluded from the sea ice and sinking. The so called “brinicle” froze everything it met in its way, including sea urchins and starfish, just like death was strolling the ocean in search of its next victim. The unusual phenomenon is caused by cold, sinking brine, which is more dense than the rest of the water. It forms a brinicle as it contacts warmer water below, resembling a human finger.

Cameramen Hugh Miller and Doug Anderson were the first ones to ever catch this on film for the BBC One series Frozen Planet. “When we were exploring around that island we came across an area where there had been three or four [brinicles] previously and there was one actually happening,” Mr Miller told BBC Nature.

They filmed this extraordinary event underneath the ice off the foothills of the volcano Mount Erebus, in water as cold as -2 degrees Celsius. You can see the amazing , after the incredible pictures of this finger of death, freezing the living creatures on the bottom of the seas.