Maybe some inspiration taken from real life stuff to model the ice in the dlc
Darwin-Evolution
France Join Date: 2015-06-07 Member: 205310Members
France Join Date: 2015-06-07 Member: 205310Members
You never know, some of these may have already been considered, but they're still very interesting to know for your own general culture 
I'll also be seperating the underwater and overwater formations in two different posts
Sea ice is constantly on the move. Wether it be icebergs tumbling over or glaciers pouring into the sea, and as it moves foreward into the water it becomes thinner and thinner due to the higher wave activity in open water. When ice is sufficiently thin, enough sunlight can pass through which enables algae to grow on the bottom of the ice since photosynthesis can take place.
Small zooplankton are quick to take advantage of all this green food and graze on it, often also entering the small holes created by wave impact and brine channels which I'll come to in a bit. They also enter the occasional caves in the thick ice that could be caused by a dislocated rock or by a large animal.
The pelagic (free-swimming) community under the ice is dominated by gelatinous zooplankton such as jellyfish, sea angels and ctenophores. Every now and then there are marine mammals too, but since they need to breathe they never stray too far from ice holes and spend a lot of their time keeping them open so that they don't drown. But the heaviest community is the benthic (bottom-living) one which is mainly sustained by algae falling from the ice and occasional pegagic fish and jellyfish sinking after death which will be scavenged upon by a number of benthic animals such as sea anemones, crustaceans, nematode worms, sea stars, sea urchins and bilvalves.
As well as detritus, the sea ice also provides the benthic community with rocks to grow on. Corals and sponges often have difficulty growing in soft mud-like surfaces, especially corals who need hard surfaces to attach themselves to, and the rocks that are brought in from inland by a flowing glacier provides just that. In fact, this constany supply of falling rocks even provides a sustainable deep-sea ecosystem as more and more hard surfaces arrive enabling deep-sea corals to take place and a community to grow.
But sea ice also provides dangers to the benthic community. As it forms, pockets of brine can occur inside the ice and falls towards the bottom over time as its saltiness freezes the water left above it and melts the ice below it. When it reaches the bottom of the ice shelf, the super salty brine is so dense that it keeps sinking. As it does so, it freezes the surrounding seawater because it's much colder than its surroundings, which creates a sort of tube of ice constantly falling from the ice shelf above with super salty water flowing inside. When it reacher the sea floor, the brine instantly freezes over, killing anything that comes in contact with the brine.
Ice crystals can also form on the seabed, and the more they grow the more capable they are of floating upwards, so if any small rock or a sea urchin is attached to one of these crystals, there's a chance that they'll be taken upwards towards the shelf where they'll probably die too.
I'll also be seperating the underwater and overwater formations in two different postsSea ice is constantly on the move. Wether it be icebergs tumbling over or glaciers pouring into the sea, and as it moves foreward into the water it becomes thinner and thinner due to the higher wave activity in open water. When ice is sufficiently thin, enough sunlight can pass through which enables algae to grow on the bottom of the ice since photosynthesis can take place.
Small zooplankton are quick to take advantage of all this green food and graze on it, often also entering the small holes created by wave impact and brine channels which I'll come to in a bit. They also enter the occasional caves in the thick ice that could be caused by a dislocated rock or by a large animal.
The pelagic (free-swimming) community under the ice is dominated by gelatinous zooplankton such as jellyfish, sea angels and ctenophores. Every now and then there are marine mammals too, but since they need to breathe they never stray too far from ice holes and spend a lot of their time keeping them open so that they don't drown. But the heaviest community is the benthic (bottom-living) one which is mainly sustained by algae falling from the ice and occasional pegagic fish and jellyfish sinking after death which will be scavenged upon by a number of benthic animals such as sea anemones, crustaceans, nematode worms, sea stars, sea urchins and bilvalves.
As well as detritus, the sea ice also provides the benthic community with rocks to grow on. Corals and sponges often have difficulty growing in soft mud-like surfaces, especially corals who need hard surfaces to attach themselves to, and the rocks that are brought in from inland by a flowing glacier provides just that. In fact, this constany supply of falling rocks even provides a sustainable deep-sea ecosystem as more and more hard surfaces arrive enabling deep-sea corals to take place and a community to grow.
But sea ice also provides dangers to the benthic community. As it forms, pockets of brine can occur inside the ice and falls towards the bottom over time as its saltiness freezes the water left above it and melts the ice below it. When it reaches the bottom of the ice shelf, the super salty brine is so dense that it keeps sinking. As it does so, it freezes the surrounding seawater because it's much colder than its surroundings, which creates a sort of tube of ice constantly falling from the ice shelf above with super salty water flowing inside. When it reacher the sea floor, the brine instantly freezes over, killing anything that comes in contact with the brine.
Ice crystals can also form on the seabed, and the more they grow the more capable they are of floating upwards, so if any small rock or a sea urchin is attached to one of these crystals, there's a chance that they'll be taken upwards towards the shelf where they'll probably die too.
Comments
Icebergs can take literally any shape and size depending on the way it detatched from a glacier, the way it rolls around in the water and the way the waves pound it (keeping in mind that 90% of a glacier is submerged). It can form bridges, it can look like a cone, it can be very high, literally anything.
There are however some smaller yet specific formations that are very interesting. One such is pancake ice which is formed either by the aggregation of sluch or grease ice (ice crystals that aren't capable of fixing together) or by sea ice breaking.
Even prettier are frost flowers which are ice crystals that commonly grow young sea ice anf thin ice lakes in calm conditions.
Another more curious formation is finger rafting which is formed when two thin expanses of ice converge towards one another. One slides over the other along a given distance which increases the thickness, and the other can also do the same which results in an alternation of interlocking overthrusts and underthrusts involved in this process.
There are also some familiar environments that can be found in polar environments such as ice caves and volcanos. But to me, the strangest and most unique phenomenon has to be blood falls.
In the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica is found the Taylor Glacier out of which flows an iron oxide-tainted plume of saltwater. These iron oxides astonishingly originate from a unique ecosystem located deep under the glacier. There is a lake there which is completely deprived of light and dissolved oxygen, and yet at least 17 different species of microbes live there completely independant of the sun. The key to their survival is a special metabolism which literally enables them to respire with ferric irons, and also results in a rejecting of iron oxides which outflows with the seawater at the edge of the glacier.
Definitely. The air is breathable. The water is, well, water (H2O). 4656B is quite earthlike besides the leviathans, so geological processes I imagine would be the same.
(teaming life under the ice, looks gorgeous)
https://m.theepochtimes.com/uplift/two-explorers-put-a-camera-underneath-antarcticas-ice-sheet-this-is-what-they-found_2454667.html
In the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica is found the Taylor Glacier out of which flows an iron oxide-tainted plume of saltwater. These iron oxides astonishingly originate from a unique ecosystem located deep under the glacier. There is a lake there which is completely deprived of light and dissolved oxygen, and yet at least 17 different species of microbes live there completely independant of the sun. The key to their survival is a special metabolism which literally enables them to respire with ferric irons, and also results in a rejecting of iron oxides which outflows with the seawater at the edge of the glacier. "
Except that due to the creatures of 4546B having a green to blue likely copper-based blood and therefore having an obvious geological abundance of copper where we have an abundance of iron, the 'blood falls' of Subnautica would likely be green or blue due to oxidation.
Precisely, now guess the color of the lakes and "falls" in the Lost River biome...