The submarine trip finds sea creatures that prosper in the deepest parts of the ocean

An underwater trip has revealed a network of creatures that prosper at the bottom of deep -waters’ ocean trenches, researchers said in a recently published article.

The trenches of deep waters, also called Hadal trenches, are “some of the less explored and understood environments of the earth,” the researchers wrote. In these extreme environments, overwhelming pressure, poor food and lack of sunlight can hinder survival. Scientists know that small microbes thrive there, but less is known about the evidence of a larger marine life.

The researchers traveling along the trenches of Kuril -Kamchatka and Aleutian in the northwest of the Pacific Ocean used a manned submersible to find tubeworms and mollusks that flourished at more than 31,000 feet deep. The deepest part of the ocean falls to about 36,000 feet.

The scientists had surveyed this area before and had suggestions that the largest creatures could live in such depths. The new discovery confirms those suspicions and shows how extensive are the communities, said Julie Huber, a deep -waters microbiologist with Woods Hole Oceanographic.

“Look how many there are, look how deep they are,” said Huber, who was not involved with the investigation. “Not everyone looks the same and they are in a place that we have not had good access before.”

In the absence of light to make their own food, many ditch inhabitants survive large and small in key elements such as carbon that drips from the highest in the ocean.

Scientists think that the microbes in this new network can be capitalizing the carbon that accumulates in the trench over time, processing it to create chemicals that are filtered through cracks in the bottom of the ocean. Pipes and mollusks can survive eating those little creatures or living with them and eating the products of their work, scientists said.

“These findings challenge the current models of life in extreme limits and the carbon cycle in the deep ocean,” the study authors wrote. The researchers said that the ways of life living in trenches “can be more widespread than expected above.”

With this discovery, future studies will focus on how these deep water creatures adapted to survive in such extreme conditions and how exactly take advantage of the chemical reactions for food, the authors of the studio Mengran Du with the Academy of Sciences of China and Vladimir Mitukhovich with the Russian Academy of Sciences said in a statement.

Its existence defies “long -standing assumptions about the potential of life at extreme depths,” said the authors.

• Oceans
• Pacific Ocean
• Science