Presented by Robert Bialas and Sterling Nesbitt
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Imagine a place without light, near freezing temperatures, little movement. This place describes most of the bottom of the ocean and, thus, most of the surface of our planet. Now imagine the harshest conditions on our planet; boiling water, hypersaline environments, nutrient free, buried under 800 meters of sediment. What do all of these places have in common? They all have flourishing life that we are just starting to sample from. When one thinks of deep ocean life, they usually imagine a large angler fish that attracts prey by use of a small bioluminescent lure or the translucent comb jelly. Though marvelous creatures, these animals only make up a tiny fraction of life in the deep ocean. Most life in the deep sea is microscopic, unobservable with the naked eye. Additionally, deep ocean microbes do not just live on the sediments or rocks, but within them. Our webpage is designed to take through some of these remarkable places in the deep ocean, give you a sense of the life communities, how life attains energy and what molecules they use rather than energy from the sun, and how/if these communities are preserved in the sediment. We will then discuss the implication on world biomass, nutrient abundance at the bottom of the ocean, and future avenues of deep sea community research. |
