Blood Falls (Taylor Glacier)

Designated an ASPA in 2004, it protects Blood Falls, a subglacial spring emerging from the snout of the Taylor Glacier in a striking deep red caused by dissolved iron oxidising on contact with the air, after being trapped and cut off from atmospheric oxygen beneath the ice for more than a million years. The water holds a unique extremophile microbial ecosystem that has evolved in complete darkness, with neither oxygen nor sunlight, drawing energy exclusively from chemical reactions with iron and sulphur, an internationally cited case study in the limiting conditions under which life can survive, with direct implications for the search for microbial life beneath the ice of moons such as Europa.