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India Today
31-07-2025
- Science
- India Today
Submersible discovers hidden world in ocean deep enough to swallow Everest
Scientists have uncovered thriving underwater communities of extraordinary marine life at record-breaking depths in the northwest Pacific's Kuril-Kamchatka and Aleutian trenches, illuminating how life can flourish in the planet's most extreme the human-crewed submersible Fendouzhe, researchers from the Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering (IDSSE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences dove to depths surpassing 9,500 meters, descending well below where Mount Everest would stand if placed these dark, frigid regions beyond sunlight's reach, the team discovered vibrant populations of tube worms, clams, and other creatures that survive through chemosynthesis—a process in which organisms derive energy by processing chemicals like hydrogen sulfide and methane released from the seafloor, rather than consuming organic material. 'What makes our discovery groundbreaking is not just its greater depth—it's the astonishing abundance and diversity of chemosynthetic life we observed,' said IDSSE marine geochemist Mengran Du, co-author of the study published this week in the journal Nature. The crushing pressure, scant food and lack of sunlight can make it hard to survive at these depths. (Photo: AP) The findings extend the previously known limits for chemosynthesis-based animal communities by nearly a quarter, with the deepest recorded settlement at 9,533 meters beneath the ocean surface—about 25% deeper than ever documented. While marine animals have been observed at even greater depths in the Mariana Trench, these were not described the expansive community as 'a vibrant oasis in the vast desert of the deep sea.' The ecosystems, stretching across trenches thousands of kilometers long, were dominated by tube worms colored red, gray, or white—measuring 20–30 centimeters long—and white clams up to 23 centimeters, some of which may be unknown species.'Our journey into the hadal zone, where Earth's crustal plates collide in subduction, revealed the deepest and most extensive chemosynthetic communities known to exist,' said IDSSE marine geologist and expedition leader Xiaotong chemical-eating species, other animals, including sea anemones, spoon worms, and sea cucumbers—dependent on organic matter drifting down from above—also inhabit these success of these life forms demonstrates remarkable resilience. 'Even though living in the harshest environment, these life forms found their way in surviving and thriving,' Du research not only broadens our understanding of Earth's deep-sea life but also carries implications beyond our planet. According to Peng, similar chemosynthetic ecosystems might exist in extraterrestrial oceans, such as those believed to exist on the moons of Jupiter, because chemical nutrients like methane and hydrogen are widely found elsewhere in the solar system.'Future works should focus on how these creatures adapt to such an extreme depth,' Peng said, emphasizing the significance of these discoveries for both Earthly and cosmic life.- EndsTune InMust Watch
Express Tribune
31-07-2025
- Science
- Express Tribune
A 'vibrant oasis' of chemical-eating creatures found in the deep Pacific
Clusters of tube worms called 'frenulate siboglinids', extending red hemoglobin-filled tentacles with small mollusks on the tops of the tubes near the tentacles, are seen at a depth of 9,320 meters (30,500 feet) beneath the sea surface at a site called Wintersweet Valley in the northwest Pacific Ocean, in this undated image. Photo: REUTERS Scientists diving to astounding depths in two oceanic trenches in the northwest Pacific have discovered thriving communities of marine creatures that get their sustenance not by eating organic matter like most animals but by turning chemicals into energy. They found these chemosynthesis-based animal communities - dominated by tube worms and clams - during a series of dives aboard a crewed submersible to the bottom of the Kuril-Kamchatka and Aleutian trenches. These creatures are nourished by fluids rich in hydrogen sulfide and methane seeping from the seafloor in this dark and frigid realm beyond the reach of sunlight. These ecosystems were discovered at depths greater than the height of Mount Everest, Earth's tallest peak. The deepest one was 9,533 meters (31,276 feet) below the ocean surface in the Kuril-Kamchatka Trench. This was almost 25% deeper than such animals had previously been documented anywhere. "What makes our discovery groundbreaking is not just its greater depth - it's the astonishing abundance and diversity of chemosynthetic life we observed," said marine geochemist Mengran Du of the Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, or IDSSE, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, one of the authors of the research published on Wednesday in the journal Nature. "Unlike isolated pockets of organisms, this community thrives like a vibrant oasis in the vast desert of the deep sea," Du added. While some marine animals have been documented at even greater depths, nearly 11,000 meters (36,000 feet) below the surface in the Pacific's Mariana Trench, Du said, those were not chemical eaters. In the new research, the scientists used their submersible, called the Fendouzhe, to journey down to what is called the hadal zone. The hadal zone is where one of the continent-sized plates that make up Earth's crust slides under a neighboring plate in a process called subduction. "The ocean environment down there is characterized by cold, total darkness and active tectonic activities," said IDSSE marine geologist and study co-author Xiaotong Peng, leader of the research program. Reuters
NZ Herald
30-07-2025
- Science
- NZ Herald
In Pacific Ocean trenches, scientists found creatures that expand the limits of where we know life can live
An international team of researchers has discovered the world's deepest known ecosystem sustained by chemicals seeping from the seafloor, submerged in water and darkness. The discovery expands the limits of where we know life can live on Earth. 'It's a unique ecosystem,' said Dominic Papineau, an exobiologist who co-wrote the study on the deep-sea discovery published today in the journal Nature. 'It's a totally new thing that has not been seen before.' The bottom dwellers, found in the Kuril-Kamchatka and Aleutian trenches, between Russia and Alaska, 'alter our understanding of trench ecosystems', said Lisa Levin, a professor emeritus of biological oceanography at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who was not involved in the study. For decades, scientists have studied organisms that thrive around hydrothermal vents, fissures spewing superheated fluids. The creatures that live around cold seeps - places where gases such as methane and hydrogen sulphide ooze from the seafloor at near-freezing temperatures, often where tectonic plates meet - have been understudied. So, to investigate, an expedition to the northwest Pacific last northern summer used the crewed submersible Fendouzhe to dive into the hadal zone, the ocean's deepest region, named for Hades, the Greek god of the underworld. China, the United States and others have been seeking to capitalise on the mineral wealth of the seafloor, mining metals for use in electric cars and other technology - and prompting concern about upending deep sea life. The trenches examined in the new study are probably too deep for mining. Their exploration demonstrates newly acquired abilities by countries and companies to investigate the open ocean. 'People know very little about the bottom of the trench,' said Du, a geochemist with China's Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, which led the study. For decades, she added, researchers lacked the 'high technology to enable us to go there'. The researchers, once down there, found they weren't alone. They discovered communities of animals dominated by marine tubeworms and molluscs spanning over 2410km of total darkness. Elsewhere on Earth, sunlight sustains life. Photosynthesis performed by plants or algae is the base of almost all food webs. Ocean scientists previously assumed trench creatures eked out an existence by feasting directly on dead animals and other organic matter that fell from sunlit parts of the ocean into the crevasses. But in the hadal zone, life appears to sustain itself through a more meandering method. Analysis of gases seeping from the seafloor suggests microbes are consuming organic matter that accumulates in the trenches and belching methane after their meals. Symbiotic bacteria inside the tubeworms and molluscs, in turn, absorb the methane and hydrogen sulphide from those cold seeps to produce organic matter to nourish their hosts. The process, called chemosynthesis, may seem like an alien way for an animal to score dinner, but Papineau noted that humans have their own colonies of microbes that aid in digestion. 'We ourselves have bacteria in our gut,' he said. The researchers expect several of the specimens they plucked from the trenches will yield species new to science, though they don't know how many. 'This is the next paper,' Papineau said. They also don't know exactly how these animals survive the extraordinarily high pressures found in the trenches. 'They must have some trick, or they must have some unique metabolic pathway, to adapt to the high pressure,' Du said. But the most surprising finding, according to biologist Lesley Blankenship-Williams, is about where all that nourishing methane is coming from: not from geological processes deep in the Earth, but from microbes in the sediment. 'Flourishing chemosynthetic communities had long been postulated to exist in the trenches, but this is the first paper that documents their existence below 9km and at multiple locations,' said Blankenship-Williams, a professor at Palomar College in California who was not involved in the study. The research team found life on 19 of 23 dives over a 40-day period, suggesting that hadal ecosystems may be common in Earth's ocean trenches. The extreme adaptability of organisms in those trenches gives hope to those searching for evidence of life in oceans on other worlds, such as Jupiter's icy moon, Europa. 'There is about 3700 million years of Earth evolution between the oldest animal fossils to the oldest microbial fossils,' Papineau said. 'So, if deep extraterrestrial oceans existed for billions of years, then perhaps similar chemosynthetic-based ecosystems with animal-like creatures could also exist there.'
GMA Network
30-07-2025
- Science
- GMA Network
A ‘vibrant oasis' of chemical-eating creatures found in the deep Pacific
A dense aggregation of mollusks called vesicomyid bivalves is seen in the seabed sediment of a deep ocean trench at a depth of 5,743 meters (18,800 feet) below the sea surface at a site called Clam Bed in the northwest Pacific Ocean, in this undated image. Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, CAS (IDSSE, CAS)/Handout via REUTERS Scientists diving to astounding depths in two oceanic trenches in the northwest Pacific have discovered thriving communities of marine creatures that get their sustenance not by eating organic matter like most animals but by turning chemicals into energy. They found these chemosynthesis-based animal communities—dominated by tube worms and clams—during a series of dives aboard a crewed submersible to the bottom of the Kuril-Kamchatka and Aleutian trenches. These creatures are nourished by fluids rich in hydrogen sulfide and methane seeping from the seafloor in this dark and frigid realm beyond the reach of sunlight. These ecosystems were discovered at depths greater than the height of Mount Everest, Earth's tallest peak. The deepest one was 9,533 meters (31,276 feet) below the ocean surface in the Kuril-Kamchatka Trench. This was almost 25% deeper than such animals had previously been documented anywhere. An undated illustration shows the deepest chemosynthetic communities of organisms at the bottom of a deep-ocean trench, with the crewed submersible Fendouzhe above. Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, CAS (IDSSE, CAS)/Handout via REUTERS "What makes our discovery groundbreaking is not just its greater depth—it's the astonishing abundance and diversity of chemosynthetic life we observed," said marine geochemist Mengran Du of the Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, or IDSSE, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, one of the authors of the research published on Wednesday in the journal Nature. "Unlike isolated pockets of organisms, this community thrives like a vibrant oasis in the vast desert of the deep sea," Du added. While some marine animals have been documented at even greater depths, nearly 11,000 meters (36,000 feet) below the surface in the Pacific's Mariana Trench, Du said, those were not chemical eaters. In the new research, the scientists used their submersible, called the Fendouzhe, to journey down to what is called the hadal zone. The hadal zone is where one of the continent-sized plates that make up Earth's crust slides under a neighboring plate in a process called subduction. "The ocean environment down there is characterized by cold, total darkness and active tectonic activities," said IDSSE marine geologist and study co-author Xiaotong Peng, leader of the research program. This environment, Peng said, was found to harbor "the deepest and the most extensive chemosynthetic communities known to exist on our planet." The Kuril-Kamchatka Trench runs about 2,900 km (1,800 miles) and is located off the southeastern coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula. The Aleutian Trench runs roughly 3,400 km (2,100 miles) off the southern coastline of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. The newly observed ecosystems were dominated by two types of chemical-eating animals—tube worms that were red, gray or white in color and around 20-30 cm (8-12 inches) long and clams that were white in color and up to 23 cm (nine inches) long. Some of these appear to be previously unknown species, Du said. "Even though living in the harshest environment, these life forms found their way in surviving and thriving," Du said. Some non-chemical-eating animals, sustained by eating organic matter and dead marine creatures that filter down from above, also were found living in these ecosystems, including sea anemones, spoon worms and sea cucumbers. Du, the expedition's chief scientist, described what it was like to visit this remote watery sphere. "Diving in the submersible was an extraordinary experience -like traveling through time. Each descent transported me to a new deep-sea realm, as if unveiling a hidden world and unraveling its mysteries," Du said, while expressing amazement at the remarkable resilience and beauty of the creatures the scientists witnessed. The study illustrates how life can flourish in some of the most extreme conditions on Earth—and potentially beyond. "These findings extend the depth limit of chemosynthetic communities on Earth. Future works should focus on how these creatures adapt to such an extreme depth," Peng said. "We suggest that similar chemosynthetic communities may also exist in extraterrestrial oceans, as chemical species like methane and hydrogen are common there," Peng added. — Reuters
Straits Times
30-07-2025
- Science
- Straits Times
A 'vibrant oasis' of chemical-eating creatures found in the deep Pacific
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox Clusters of tube worms called \"frenulate siboglinids\", extending red hemoglobin-filled tentacles with small mollusks on the tops of the tubes near the tentacles, are seen at a depth of 9,320 meters (30,500 feet) beneath the sea surface at a site called Wintersweet Valley in the northwest Pacific Ocean, in this undated image. Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, CAS (IDSSE, CAS)/Handout via REUTERS Scientists diving to astounding depths in two oceanic trenches in the northwest Pacific have discovered thriving communities of marine creatures that get their sustenance not by eating organic matter like most animals but by turning chemicals into energy. They found these chemosynthesis-based animal communities - dominated by tube worms and clams - during a series of dives aboard a crewed submersible to the bottom of the Kuril-Kamchatka and Aleutian trenches. These creatures are nourished by fluids rich in hydrogen sulfide and methane seeping from the seafloor in this dark and frigid realm beyond the reach of sunlight. These ecosystems were discovered at depths greater than the height of Mount Everest, Earth's tallest peak. The deepest one was 9,533 meters (31,276 feet) below the ocean surface in the Kuril-Kamchatka Trench. This was almost 25% deeper than such animals had previously been documented anywhere. "What makes our discovery groundbreaking is not just its greater depth - it's the astonishing abundance and diversity of chemosynthetic life we observed," said marine geochemist Mengran Du of the Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, or IDSSE, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, one of the authors of the research published on Wednesday in the journal Nature. "Unlike isolated pockets of organisms, this community thrives like a vibrant oasis in the vast desert of the deep sea," Du added. While some marine animals have been documented at even greater depths, nearly 11,000 meters (36,000 feet) below the surface in the Pacific's Mariana Trench, Du said, those were not chemical eaters. In the new research, the scientists used their submersible, called the Fendouzhe, to journey down to what is called the hadal zone. The hadal zone is where one of the continent-sized plates that make up Earth's crust slides under a neighboring plate in a process called subduction. Top stories Swipe. Select. Stay informed. 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This environment, Peng said, was found to harbor "the deepest and the most extensive chemosynthetic communities known to exist on our planet." The Kuril-Kamchatka Trench runs about 2,900 km (1,800 miles) and is located off the southeastern coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula. The Aleutian Trench runs roughly 3,400 km (2,100 miles) off the southern coastline of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. The newly observed ecosystems were dominated by two types of chemical-eating animals - tube worms that were red, gray or white in color and around 20-30 cm (8-12 inches) long and clams that were white in color and up to 23 cm (nine inches) long. Some of these appear to be previously unknown species, Du said. "Even though living in the harshest environment, these life forms found their way in surviving and thriving," Du said. Some non-chemical-eating animals, sustained by eating organic matter and dead marine creatures that filter down from above, also were found living in these ecosystems, including sea anemones, spoon worms and sea cucumbers. Du, the expedition's chief scientist, described what it was like to visit this remote watery sphere. "Diving in the submersible was an extraordinary experience -like traveling through time. Each descent transported me to a new deep-sea realm, as if unveiling a hidden world and unraveling its mysteries," Du said, while expressing amazement at the remarkable resilience and beauty of the creatures the scientists witnessed. The study illustrates how life can flourish in some of the most extreme conditions on Earth - and potentially beyond. "These findings extend the depth limit of chemosynthetic communities on Earth. Future works should focus on how these creatures adapt to such an extreme depth," Peng said. "We suggest that similar chemosynthetic communities may also exist in extraterrestrial oceans, as chemical species like methane and hydrogen are common there," Peng added. REUTERS
