WASHINGTON -- Scientists have made a biological discovery in Arctic Ocean waters as dramatic and unexpected as finding a rainforest in the middle of a desert. A NASA-sponsored expedition punched through three-foot thick sea ice to find waters richer in microscopic marine plants, essential to all sea life, than any other ocean region on Earth.
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2012/jun/HQ_12-184_NASA_Discovers_Ocean_Plant_Life.html
Basiclly they found large plankton blooms-the kind that eat co2 and feed ocean animals in the artic where it normally is thought to be impossible due to ice acting as sunlight blocker