These ice-loving algae may play a big role in lake health

Abby Hughes · CBC Radio

· Posted: Mar 07, 2025 3:57 PM EST | Last Updated: March 7

On apical of the ice, lakes successful the wintertime don't look similar much. They're barren and seemingly lifeless, a achromatic expanse stretching retired arsenic acold arsenic the oculus tin see.

But the presumption from beneath is thing wholly antithetic and magical, according to journalist Andrew Budziak.

"It's arsenic if idiosyncratic has taken a cathedral and turned it connected its broadside … the ceiling is stained glass, and the airy comes done the crystal successful a mode that is wholly surreal," Budziak told The Current host Matt Galloway. "It's each precise calm and precise still."

Budziak says he's ever loved diving, but successful the past fewer years he's been taking the plunge into freezing-cold waters crossed Ontario in the sanction of science.

While the satellite nether the crystal mightiness look still, it's really alive with microorganisms specified arsenic algae twelvemonth round, some successful the h2o and wrong the ice.

With the assistance of Budziak and the diving team, researchers are getting a caller look astatine a circumstantial assemblage of algae that hangs retired connected and astir the bottommost of the crystal during the wintertime done samples the divers bring topside. And researchers accidental they're racing against clip to recognize this radical of algae earlier clime alteration thaws the crystal they telephone home — possibly threatening the algae and harming the ecosystem.

How to survey nether crystal algae?

Researchers person known that definite kinds of algae unrecorded successful and astir crystal for years. But successful the mid 2000s, immoderate scientists connected a ship noticed that the underside of chunks of crystal bobbing successful the aftermath of the vessel were wholly brownish with algae. 

Andrew Bramburger — a probe scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada — says erstwhile that radical tried to propulsion the crystal retired of the h2o to cheque retired the algae underneath, the fragile microorganisms slipped close off, making it intolerable to get a bully sample. 

Those researchers were capable to find from residual bits near down connected the crystal that the algae were diatoms — a benignant of azygous celled algae that photosynthesize, oregon marque vigor retired of sunlight.

"We cognize that [diatoms are] a truly important nutrient root that's astatine the basal of the full aquatic nutrient web successful the Great Lakes," Bramburger said. "So we started thinking, you know, if we suffer crystal and suffer the ice-attached algae, what does that really mean?"

WATCH | Trailer for Andrew Budziak's documentary astir collecting samples from nether the ice:

But due to the fact that pulling the crystal retired of the h2o disturbed the algae, answering that question remained difficult.

That's erstwhile Budziak came in. He was talking to Bramburger for a antithetic documentary task erstwhile the 2 started discussing this algae Bramburger was hoping to study. 

Budziak asked if a diving squad would enactment to retrieve the samples, and Bramburger thought it was worthy a shot. Within weeks, the 2 began building a mechanics to cod the algae and assembling a dive team. Budziak has been filming the process for a documentary.

How it works

Put simply, the postulation instrumentality looks similar a plexiglass dome with 2 bags connected to either broadside by tubes. Each bag — 1 filled with aerial and 1 that's empty — has a one-way valve. 

The plexiglass dome suctions to the bottommost aboveground of the ice. Then, the diver lets aerial from the archetypal container into the plexiglass dome. The aerial bubbling wrong the dome is capable to mildly sound the algae disconnected the crystal and into the water. That h2o is collected successful the bare bag, creating a clean, scientifically-relevant illustration afloat of ice-loving algae. 

Budziak, Bramburger and an crystal diving expert first tested the process successful the wintertime of 2023 connected Lake Simcoe. In the winters since, Bramburger says they've perfected their method and begun collecting samples from Lake of the Woods adjacent Kenora, Ont.

In all, accounting for weather, readying for disasters, getting instrumentality to the tract and more all instrumentality weeks to months of preparation. 

The divers themselves combat acold conditions with a laundry database of instrumentality including dry suits, agelong underwear, heated vests and gloves.

But Calum Cawley accidental it's worthy it. 

"The feeling of being underwater and particularly nether crystal is peculiar connected its own," the diver said. "But … being capable to present things that the technological assemblage finds interesting, I thought it was truly cool."

What they've found

The 33 samples they've collected truthful acold this wintertime are being studied by astatine slightest a fewer dozen researchers crossed North America, according to Bramburger.

He says nary probe has been published yet, but adds the archetypal studies volition apt beryllium submitted successful the adjacent fewer months.

Andrea Kirkwood, an algal ecologist and prof astatine Ontario Tech University, who is not progressive successful this diving and gathering project, says the probe Bramburger and the squad are undertaking is truly breathtaking due to the fact that it volition assistance capable a cognition spread astir what microorganisms unrecorded successful this abstraction conscionable beneath the ice.

Bramburger besides says he's made an absorbing archetypal reflection — that the algae successful these samples represent a chiseled community, unsocial from the kinds of algae surviving elsewhere successful the water. 

The find of this unsocial assemblage is particularly important owed to clime change, Bramburger says — arsenic crystal starts to disappear, the algae that telephone it location volition apt beryllium impacted successful immoderate way.

He says it's imaginable that immoderate of these algae types volition dice retired successful an iceless future, portion others whitethorn find ways to interval adjacent the aboveground and survive.

"I fishy they'd inactive beryllium alive, but they conscionable wouldn't beryllium terribly happy," Bramburger estimates.

But whether oregon not the algae are "happy" could person superior consequences connected the ecosystem astir them. Because galore of these algae types release oxygen and are a captious basal of the nutrient chain, their endurance could person impacts connected c dioxide levels coming from lakes arsenic good arsenic the ecosystems successful them, Bramburger hypothesizes.

Kirkwood agrees that the archetypal find opens up much questions astir however planetary warming volition interaction this population. If these bully oxygen-producing algae were to endure from a nonaccomplishment of ice, it's imaginable that atrocious algae — similar the toxic blooms that turn successful the summertime — would person much resources to thrive, Kirkwood says.

Already, she says algae blooms that utilized to dice disconnected by August oregon September are lasting good into the fall.

Melting crystal poses a achy irony for the team, too. While it volition instrumentality much illustration postulation and much probe to recognize however invaluable the crystal is, warmer winters are making it an adjacent much hard task. 

Some of the samples collected volition beryllium cryogenically frozen at the Canadian Museum of Nature. That mode if the crystal screen disappears and microorganisms die, astatine slightest a grounds of them volition remain, according to Roger Bull who runs the museum's National Biodiversity Cryobank.

For Budziak, helium hopes the security is ne'er necessary, and that the ultra-Canadian endeavour volition assistance support our lakes.

"[Canadians are] adventurous radical … we emotion winter," Budziak said. "We emotion our lakes and we should beryllium moving hard to recognize and support them."