Latest news with #OceanXplorer
Arab News
08-05-2025
- Science
- Arab News
KAUST researchers join Africa marine research expedition
RIYADH: Researchers from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology joined the Saudi non-profit foundation OceanQuest on its first marine expedition around Africa aboard the research vessel OceanXplorer. The mission began in Moroni, Comoros, with the team sailing south through the Indian Ocean to Cape Town, South Africa. Researchers focused on assessing biodiversity at several seamounts — underwater mountain formations. A second phase, designed for early-career oceanographers, proceeded north to Walvis Bay in Namibia before concluding scientific operations in Mindelo, Cabo Verde. The KAUST research team, comprising two PhD candidates from the Marine Microbiome Lab and one from Earth Science and Engineering, conducted research in biodiversity assessment, seamount studies and chemical analysis. The team compared seamount formation in the Indian Ocean with similar geological phenomena in Saudi waters.
Yahoo
01-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Death pool with 10x more saltier water kills marine life, found below Gulf of Aqaba
Brine pools are hypersaline underwater lakes that are lethal to most marine life. Created from ancient salt deposits sleeping on the sea floor, they are so dense that their surface is nearly impenetrable. Despite being completely devoid of oxygen, they are still believed to hold secrets about the formation of Earth's oceans millions of years ago and may offer clues to life on other planets. Researchers from the University of Miami, who have been exploring the Red Sea, have identified such brine pools approximately 4,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Aqaba. The region which, according to the Bible, is thought to be where Moses "split the sea", is now offering new insights into its extreme underwater environment. The brine pools were found to contain water up to 10 times saltier than regular seawater. In addition, their severe anoxic conditions make them so toxic, that any marine creatures that enter are killed or paralyzed instantly. Moreover, as the brutal environment and toxic waters further debilitate marine life, predators lurk at the edges, ready to snatch helpless prey. Led by Sam Purkis, PhD, a professor and chair of the Department of Marine Geosciences at the University of Miami, the team explored the area using remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROV) on the OceanXplorer, a highly equipped research vessel capable of navigating Earth's most isolated regions. "We were very lucky," Purkis says adding that the team was focusing on the deep-sea trenches between Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. "The discovery came in the last five minutes of the ten-hour ROV dive that we could dedicate to this project." The researchers suggest that these extreme environments mimic the harsh conditions of the planet's past, in this deep-sea location, where they believe life may have first originated. "Our current understanding is that life originated on Earth in the deep sea, almost certainly in anoxic - without oxygen - conditions," Purkis explains, emphasizing that these brine pools may offer valuable clues in the search for extraterrestrial life. "Until we understand the limits of life on Earth, it will be difficult to determine if alien planets can host any living beings," Purkis adds. "Our discovery of a rich community of microbes that survive in extreme environments can help trace the limits of life on Earth and can be applied to the search for life elsewhere in our solar system and beyond." With only around 40 brine pools identified in the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, and the recently renamed Gulf of America, the team believes they could provide insights into the origins of life. The team highlights their importance as natural time capsules, claiming that due to their untouched sediment layers and the very few organisms that thrive there, they might be preserving not only the region's historical records but also resembling conditions found on distant "water worlds" beyond our solar system. "Ordinarily, these animals bioturbate or churn up the seabed, disturbing the sediments that accumulate there," Purkis concludes. "Not so with the brine pools. Here, any sedimentary layers that settle to the bed of the brine pool remain exquisitely intact." Purkis and his team hope further explorations will help them better understand ancient oceans, climate changes, and how Earth's ecosystems evolved over millions of years. The study was published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.
Yahoo
26-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
400 years ago, Arabia witnessed five times more extreme rains, reveals study
A study has suggested that the Arabian Peninsula witnessed five times more extreme rains almost 400 years ago than today. It also hints that the last 2,000 years were much wetter, with the region's climate once resembling a vegetated savannah roaming with lions, leopards, and wolves, unlike its present-day hyper-arid from the University of Miami revealed that as the Middle East rapidly urbanizes, wide variability of Late Holocene rains should be considered in flash flood preparedness and future hydroclimate trajectories. Sam Purkis, chair of the Department of Marine Geosciences at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School and the lead author of the study, stated that as major development projects like NEOM in Saudi Arabia continue to reshape the landscape, the study's findings underscore the critical need for enhanced climate resilience and disaster preparedness to address the growing threat of extreme weather events in the used a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) at over a mile depth from the research vessel OceanXplorer, and extracted sediment cores from a deep-sea brine pool in the Gulf of Aqaba, an extension of the northern Red brine's chemistry preserves undisturbed sediment layers, providing a unique and highly accurate record of Late Holocene rainfall trends. The research team found that the last 2,000 years in Arabia were much wetter, with the region once a vegetated savannah and about 200 years ago, rainfall was double the current amount. "This is a key record to fill in the history of Middle Eastern climate," said Amy Clement, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School."What it tells us is that the climate, both the average and the extremes, can change dramatically in this region, and the assumption of long-term climate stability in future development is not a good one."Published in Science Advances, the study's researchers discovered an anoxic deep-sea brine pool sited close enough to shore to chronicle floods, yet be otherwise undisturbed by research team revealed that the cores retrieved from the pool delivered a 1600-year rainfall record. The team merged these core-layer histories with modern rainfall statistics, satellite observations, and simulations to deliver a high-resolution quantitative Late Holocene hydroclimate record for Arabia."We find that the modern era is 2.5 times drier than the last 1.6 thousand years. The Little Ice Age stands out as particularly wet. That period experienced a fivefold increase in rainfall intensity compared to today. Though hyperarid now, the flood layers demonstrate that climate shifts can generate weather conditions unwitnessed in the modern era," said researchers in the Middle East is considered a climate hotspot, with increasing flash floods from torrential winter rains, interspersed by harsh droughts, in Arabia causing widespread chaos and humanitarian disasters. The variability of Late Holocene rainfall highlights the need for better flash flood and drought preparedness and understanding future hydroclimate trends as the Middle East rapidly urbanizes, according to a press release by researchers."Utilizing the technology on OceanXplorer in combination with multidisciplinary experts in ocean and climate science we can further our understanding of the linkages between ocean systems and long-term weather and climate trends, to help at-risk areas be ready for the future," said Mattie Rodrigue, science program director at feel that the catastrophic flooding across the Arabian Peninsula in the winter of 2024 underscores the urgency of studying the frequency and triggers of such extreme weather events.
