Discovery can change everything we know about life in the deep oceans.
Almost 10 kilometers below sea level, a scientific mission led by China in the famous Marian pit revealed the presence of deepest animal community ever registered on Earth.
The discovery may change everything we know about life in the deep oceans, researchers point out in Nature study this Wednesday.
Aboard the submersible, the investigators dived 23 times In the iconic Western Pacific pit – the deepest ocean pit in the world – over the last year, depths between 2,500 and 9,533 meters.
And it was so, completely in the dark, that scientists found Thousands of sea worms, bivalve mollusks and other invertebrate species, among which thorny crustaceans, sea cucumber, sea lilies e floating marine worms.
Without any sunlight, these creatures survive thanks to Chemose – A process in which microorganisms transform chemical compounds such as methane, released by cracks in the sea bed, into energy. Microbial rugs, surrounded by worms, They look like snow In the ocean, compare: are an indicator that these microbes produce methane.
Similar life structures may exist in other ocean pits on the planet, admit the study authors, who also shared a video of the expedition.
Researchers do not forget to warn of the growing ‘fashion’, in a race to rare minerals and the subsequent destruction of poorly understood and even unknown ecosystems. The warnings are not new, but so far there is no regulation for the search for precious metals.
The Marian pit is deeper than the height of Mount Evereste And it was first visited in 1960, and was again explored only in 2012 by director James Cameron, who described the place as an “alien” environment.
The depth pressure exceeds eight tons per square inch – more than a thousand times the atmospheric pressure at sea level.
