Ice disturbance is possibly the major structuring element of polar nearshore biological communities.
Effects range from encapsulation by ice forming on rock substrata to gouging and trampling by bergs.
Communities can be held at early successional stages, or even completely destroyed by scouring, and these effects occur from the intertidal to depths around 500 m in Antarctica. The wide scales of disturbance intensity are thought to add to the overall high levels of Antarctic benthic biological diversity, which has recently been shown to be similar to tropical areas. Species return was via locomotion, advection or larval recolonisation, and all 3 mechanisms worked on different timescales. Locomotion caused groups to return within 10 d of an impact. Storms with wind speeds around 100 km h -1 induced water movements intense enough to advect meiofauna to the 9 m depth site.