Scientists say they have staged the ocean in a deep-sea-hundred compound and encountered an undiscovered ecosystem

Marine researchers who investigate extreme depths say that they have discovered an amazingly deep sea ecosystem of chemosynthetic life that is fed by gases that escapes fractions in the ocean bed. The expedition revealed methane -producing microbes and invertebrates that make their home in ruthless circumstances where the rays of the sun do not reach, according to a new study.

Geochemist Mengran Du had 30 minutes left in her immersion mission when she decided to explore one last part of the trenches between Russia and Alaska, about 5,800 to 9,500 meters (19,000 to 30,000 feet) under the ocean surface in what the Hadal zone is called. She said she began to notice ‘amazing beings’, including different types of clam and tubeworm that had never been so deep below the surface.

What Du encountered was an approximately 2500 kilometers (1,550 miles) piece of what her team says, the deepest known ecosystem of organisms that use the chemically composite methane instead of sunlight to survive. Du is a co-leading author of a study describing the findings published on July 30 in the journal Nature.

The Hadal Zone consists mainly of oceanic trenches and valleys – some of the deepest and least explored environments on earth. At these depths, “life needs tricks to survive and thrive there,” Du explained, a professor and researcher at the Institute of Deep-Sea Science and Engineering at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

One of those tricks lies in bacteria that have evolved to live in the mussels and tubeworms, according to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. The bacteria convert methane and hydrogen sulfide from cold leaks – cracks in the seabed that leak these connections as liquids – in energy and food that the host animal can use“ Which means that organisms can live in zero-sunlight circumstances.

The discovery suggests that these communities can also exist in other Hadal loops, said Du, who open opportunities for further research into how deep these animals can survive.

Deep Sea ecosystem fed by methane

After analyzing sediment samples collected from the expedition, Du and her team said they have detected high concentrations of methane. The find was surprising, because deep -sea sediments normally contain very low concentrations of the connection.

The scientists assumed that microbes living in the ecosystem convert organic material into the sediments into carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide in methane – something that the researchers did not know that microbes could do. The bacteria that live in clam and tube worm species use this methane for chemosynthesis to survive, Du said.

There was also a revelation. Scientists previously thought that chemosynthetic communities were dependent on organic substances – such as dead organisms and floating particles of living species – that fell from the surface of the ocean to the floor. But this discovery, Du said, reveals that these methane -producing microbes also create a local source of organic molecules that can use larger organisms such as mussels for food and energy.

Methane, as a carbon -containing connection, is part of the carbon cycle. So this discovery also indicates that the Hadal loops in that cycle play a more important role than before, DU explained.

Scientists have long understood that methane is stored as a compressed liquid deep in the subduct zone, where tectonic plates meet under the ocean floor, which eventually releases “cold sijpelingen” on the bottom of Hadal running graves. Now that the Du Chemosynthesis team has discovered at such depths, they assume that the Hadal Trenches not only act as reservoirs, but also as recycling centers for methane.

This suggests, Du said, that “a large amount of carbon remains in the sediments and (is) recycled by the microorganisms.” Scientists have indeed recently estimated that sediments of the Hadalzone can be no less than 70 times more organic carbon than the surrounding seabed. These so -called carbon wells are crucial for our planet, since methane and carbon dioxide are two important greenhouse gases that stimulate global warming in the atmosphere.

Further research into deep-sea ecosystems

Chemosynthetic communities themselves are not new in science. Earlier research has hinted that it was possible for them to thrive at such great depths, said Johanna Weston, a deep ocean -ecologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts that was not involved in the new study. However, she was impressed by the size of the recent discovery, she told CNN.

In an era of widespread loss of biodiversity, the finding emphasizes the importance of new technology that can resist high pressure in deep-sea environments to document undiscovered organisms, said Weston, which is part of a team that actively explores the Deep-Sea Offshore from Argentina.

Although the Hadal running graves are remote, they are not fully insulated, she added. Weston and her colleagues discovered a new species in 2020 in the Mariana Geul named Eurythenes plastic for the microplastic fibers that were detected in his gut. And near Puerto Rico, Weston, newly identified a ISOPOD that eats exclusively Sargassum, a kind of abundant seaweed in the Atlantic Ocean that can sink to the ocean floor in just 40 hours. “The deep ocean is very connected to what happens on the surface,” she said.

Research into deep-sea ecosystems is only a few decades old and the technology for new discoveries has been improved. But du added that it is important for different countries and scientific disciplines to work together on future efforts. The Global Hadal Exploration Program, which is partly led by UNESCO and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is intended to do that exactly by creating a network of Diepzee scientists from several countries.

Du hopes that she and her team can learn more about Hadal Trench -Ecosystems by studying how these species have adapted to such extreme depths.

“Although we see the Hadal Trench as a very extreme environment, the most inhospitable environment … (chemosynthetic organisms) can live happily there,” said Du.

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