Perforations off Cape Cod have revealed vast underwater aquifers that can transform the future of water supply and change the world. “It was a moment Eureka.”
In 1976, during a search for oil and gas off the east coast of the US, a team of scientists came across something much more unexpected than hydrocarbons.
Under the salted water, the Freshwater of the sediment nuclei they collected. No one knew for sure how to interpret it. It would be an isolated chance, or a indication of something much bigger?
Half a century later, the mystery returns in strength to the order of the day. This summer, an international team of scientists, aboard a drill ship off Cape Cod, found Thousands of liters of freshwater from the depths of the marine underground.
A, as it was baptized, may have confirmed the existence of one of the largest hidden aquifers on the planetwhich extends through a distance similar to the one that separates the port of Faro.
“It’s one of the last places where someone would imagine find freshwater on earth,” he told Brandon DuganGeophysicist and Hydrologist at Colorado School of Mines, and one of the expedition leaders – which was attended by the Portuguese sedimentologist Davide Gamboafrom the University of Aveiro.
It is estimated that there is sufficient water In this submarine aquifer to supply a city like New York for centuries. The discovery raises the possibility of, in the future, pierce in search of drinking water at the bottom of the seanot very differently from what is done today with oil and gas.
A secret reserve of water under the waves
The ocean covers 70% of the planet, but what hides under its funds remains in large part unknown – For obvious reasons.
Scientists have long suspected that coastal aquifers on earth extend to the sea, retaining freshwater or “sweetened” imprisoned for thousands of years. So far, however, No one had pierced Systematically the marine background to test this hypothesis, note o.
Expedition 501 was launched precisely with this goal. Between May and July 2025, the researchers used the platform, usually at the service of oil pollsto drill sediments off the coast of Massachusetts.
Almost 400 meters deepthey found water with salinity levels as low as 1 part per thousand – comparable to many freshwater sources on land.
“Four parts per thousand was a Eureka moment“Says Dugan.
“So far, we know very little about the dynamics of these aquifer systems that cross the coastal and the age of the water they contain, and even less on the form how they influence the nutrient cycletrace elements and their isotopes, ”said Environmental Geochemistry in May Karen Johannessonresearcher at the University of Massachusetts and scientific co-leader of the expedition, in.
The challenge is huge. The United Nations warn that by 2030 global freshwater demand may exceed the offer by 40%.
Currently high performance computer systems, such as those used on AI, consume thousands of millions of liters of water for Cool Servers – A pressure that, with the current race to artificial intelligence, tends to increase.
In addition, the rising sea level is saline the coastal aquifers. And cities like the city of Cape or Jakarta have already been on the brink of the so -called “day zero”, the nightmare to open the tap and not leave water.
Now, scientists wonder if submarine aquifers can become Emergency reserves for thirsty societies. Preliminary estimates suggest that the aquifer now found could supply New York for hundreds of years, and similar deposits may exist Largo from Africa, Asia and other regions.
Promises and Risks
Before thinking about channeling this old water to Earth, researchers have to answer crucial questions. Where it came from? Some hypotheses point to the Glacial Degelus About 450,000 years ago.
Other theories suggest that it was rainwater infiltrated in sediments When the sea level was lower.
If the water is “young”it may mean that aquifers still recharge and are renewable. If it is old, the supply will be finite. Thus, it is essential to determine the age of this water.
There is still the biological. “This is a whole new environment that has never been studied,” he told AP the biologist Jocelyne DiRuggierofrom Johns Hopkins University.
The researcher warns that water may contain harmful minerals or microorganisms, although similar processes are precisely those that form the drinking water aquifers we use on earth.
