This is a unique ecosystem. We have never seen anything like it before in the high Central Arctic.

Antje Boetius

Antje Boetius (born 5 March 1967) is a German marine biologist. She is a professor of geomicrobiology at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, University of Bremen. Boetius received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, with 2.5 million euros in funding, in March 2009 for her study of sea bed microorganisms that affect the global climate. She is also the director of Germany's polar research hub, the Alfred Wegener Institute.Boetius was the first person to describe anaerobic oxidation of methane, and believes the Earth's earliest life forms may have subsisted on methane in the absence of molecular oxygen (instead reducing oxygen-containing compounds such as nitrate or sulfate). She has also suggested such life forms may be able to reduce the rate of climate change in future. She is one of the laureates of the 2018 Environment Prize (German Environment Foundation) Boetius also won the Erna Hamburger Prize in 2019.

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