Discover 5 Real "Fantasy" Landscapes (and a Perfect Evil Lair)

Have you ever thought a fictional landscape seemed silly, or even implausible? In reality plenty of places on Earth would fit right into a fantasy novel, such as...

• The underwater volcano covered in golden eggs
• The drowned forest of Lake Kaindy
• The ecosystem beneath the Antarctic ice
• The fog-plant-oases of Namibia, Chile and Peru
• The supervillain-friendly Deception Island

The Underwater Volcano Covered in Golden Eggs: Most egg-laying creatures pick somewhere safe and secluded as a nest - which made the discovery of an active deep-sea volcano covered in millions of golden eggs something of a surprise!

The Tuzo Wilson Seamounts are a pair of young, active volcanoes off the coast of Canada. Their summits are around 1400m below sea level, with the seabed sitting around 1500m. Because the volcanoes are active, they provide some warmth to the deep water surrounding them... something the Pacific white skate has learned to take advantage of.

This skate is a bone-white deep-sea relative of sharks and rays - and amazingly, it lays eggs that take between four and ten years to hatch. A robotic expedition to the seamounts discovered a massive nursery of golden "mermaid purse" eggs covering the slopes, kept incubated by the volcanically warmed waters - researchers estimate that the main nursery contains 2.6 million eggs!

The Drowned Forest of Lake Kaindy: In 1911 an earthquake wracked the Tian Shan Mountains of Kazakhstan. Crumbling limestone dropped into the forests below and dammed a small portion of the valley... which soon began to accumulate rainwater. It wasn't long before the mineral-rich, turquoise-coloured Lake Kaindy formed.

Colorful water isn't the really strange thing about this lake though. As noted above, it formed fairly quickly in an area that had previously been spruce forest - and the remains of those trees jut from the water. The foliage has been stripped from the exposed dry wood, but beneath the still waters of the lake the trunks, branches and even needles are preserved. It's thought that the chilled water (hovering just above freezing) is responsible for protecting the drowned forest against the ravages of time.

The Ecosystem Beneath the Antarctic Ice: In 2025 an iceberg the size of Chicago calved from the Antarctic Peninsula ice sheet and sped away at an impressive 250km per month. The free-wheeling iceberg may be concerning, it left a window into a section of ocean normally concealed by the ice.

Surprisingly, researchers found life flourishing in the icy waters. Deep sea ecosystems normally rely on bits of organic matter and minerals falling into the water and slowly sinking to the seabed - but in this case, the water had been covered by 150m of ice for several centuries. Perhaps ocean currents are sustaining the ecosystem with nutrients from more open waters?

However they get their meals, it's clear from the massive sponges and corals, clustered anemones, lurking octopuses and meter-wide jellyfish that life can and does thrive in the darkness beneath the ice.

The Fog-Plant-Oases of Namibia, Chile and Peru: The typical image of a desert is one of hot, dry sand. However, some coastal deserts can find themselves blanketed in fog... which can support isolated islands of greenery.

Though considered hyper-arid, the Namib Desert is bordered by the Atlantic ocean. The cool, damp air that blows onshore sends fog banks rolling across the desert, which offer a major source of moisture for organisms eking out life on the sand. In fact, parts of the desert receive more water from fog than from rain.

Plants like the fog-harvesting grass Stipagrostis sabulicola have adapted to make the most of this airborne bounty. Colonies of this greenery can form a fog-plant-oasis, condensing moisture on their leaves and acting as the foundation for a whole ecosystem of plants, bacteria and invertebrates. The grass can even build up a small sand dune (known as a nebkha) by trapping wind-blown material. Researchers have found that these dunes actually reduce the local wind-speed and allow the plants more time to "trap" passing fog!.

The new world also features foggy deserts - the Sechura-Atacama region is bordered by the Pacific, with the ocean air regularly producing foggy conditions. Just like in Namib, the fog can support islands of greenery in the parched sands!

The Supervillain-Friendly Deception Island: Resembling nothing less than the lair of a supervillain (and with a thematically appropriate name to boot) Deception Island of the South Shetland Islands in the Antarctic is an active volcano... and ships can sail right into the middle of the caldera.

The island today is a 10km wide ring of rock containing a body of seawater. It partially collapsed into the ocean around 10,000 years ago, allowing the water in and (somewhat ironically) making a fairly good harbor against the sea. That doesn't mean that the place is safe though - between 1967 and 1970 a series of small eruptions destroyed Chilean and British outposts on the island.

Deception Island now acts as a combined tourist attraction and museum of the Antarctic, holding abandoned equipment from whalers, researchers and even aviators. It also acts as the homeland of the chinstrap penguins, with 50,000-100,000 pairs inhabiting the site!

Sources and Further Information:

Scientists find millions of 'golden eggs' near underwater volcano

The Tuzo Wilson Knolls

Lake Kaindy (Dead Lake of Kazakhstan)

Thriving Antarctic Ecosystems Found in Wake of Recently Detached Iceberg

The fog harvesting Namib Desert dune grass Stipagrostis sabulicola promotes niche building by modifying substrate and atmosphere conditions

The secret desert fog oases

Deception Island – Antarctic Specially Managed Area

Antarctica's volatile 'Deception Island'