Abstract

Antarctic ice shelves modulate ice-sheet mass balance through buttressing, yet the hidden cavities underneath remain largely unexplored. In January and February 2025, a Schmidt Ocean Institute cruise to the Bellingshausen Sea collected a _{4,000 km² of high-resolution multibeam imagery, a set of densely-spaced oceanographic measurements, 161 hours of remotely operated vehicle footage, and 864 water, fauna, and geological samples from Ronne Entrance, in areas immediately adjacent to George VI, Stange, and Bach ice shelves. In George VI ice shelf area, observations were made just few days after large calving event, in effect enabling observations of intact sub-ice shelf environment across} 350 sq. km of newly exposed area. This talk will provide an overview of this expedition, focusing on geological, oceanographic, and ecological processes shaping sub-ice shelf environments.