New Life Form Found Deep Down Under The Sea
An underwater exploration, deep down in 1990, gave way to an interesting discovery below the profound depths of the ocean. A mysterious lake at about half a mile down the bottom of Gulf of Mexico was discovered. The lake stretched to a length of 20 meters, and featured a personal sandy shore. Quite amazingly, the explorers found a prominent tide line around the lapping salty brine edge of the shore. This was quite a discovery, as an underwater tide line was mostly an absurd phenomenon to observe.
The heavily dense sandy shore comprised stacks of marine species, muscles. The animals found in this barren and desolate sea floor, survives entirely without solar power. The rich oasis of fauna comprised some new unique species like, the shrimps, bright red polychaete worms and weird spot lobsters. Interestingly, unlike most other species on earth, life on this sea bed is run through methane. The methane gas, bubbling out of the enriched sea bed, forms the chief energy source for life here. The muscle carried some special bacteria that helped in the fixing of the methane’s energy.
The rich oasis of life and the unique ecological system of the deep ocean floor were all cold seeps. Quite similar to hot vents, but the cold seeps use methane as main energy source.
Besides the muscles and the lobsters, there was also an extensive field of tube worms quite close to this underwater lake, as old as 200 years old, near the brine pool of water. These tube worms use bacteria to fix energy from hydrogen sulphides, and also extracts some directly from the floor. The gorgeous gills of these worms are used for supplying oxygen to the bacterias.
It has been observed that life survival on these cold seeps is far more dependable and stable than that of the hot vents. Though contrarily, the hot vent tube worms were considered to be the fastest growing invertebrates previously, the tube worms found near these seeps seems faster. But it has been discovered further that life can enjoy a more secured geological future in this sort of a unique ecological system.
By exploring only 1% of the vast ocean floor, we were stunned to find new life forms. It only indicates what further explorations can reveal.
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