There’s always something, dear readers, that is sending me on tirade, and today I’m totally flabbergasted by “the brinicle”. What the heck is a brinicle, you ask? It’s only a ghastly icicle composed of dense, sinking brine that forms an icicle when it comes into contact with the warmer water below! My particular affection for the phenomenon comes from its darker afflictions; the brinicle’s other nickname is “the icicle of death” (tenderly termed by the BBC) because of its tendency to kill everything that it touches by trapping it in its icy grip. Holy moly.

While shooting a series called Frozen Planet for the BBC One, filmmakers Hugh Miller and Doug Anderson managed (after battling some unfriendly seals) to get footage of the brinicle forming for the first time. “It was a bit of a race against time because no-one really knew how fast they formed,” said Miller, in a talk with the BBC. What do we humans know about anything anyway? Despite the BBC’s nature series’ firm relationship with the principles of the Enlightenment, I can’t help but feel like there’s something biblical about a beautiful, lonely ice sculpture hanging in the abyss, waiting to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting starfish and urchins below.

The footage (narrated by the world’s uncle, Sir David Attenborough):