{"id":895,"date":"2025-08-01T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/?p=895"},"modified":"2025-08-01T19:11:59","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T19:11:59","slug":"scientists-made-a-mind-blowing-discovery-more-than-30000-feet-under-the-pacific-ocean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/01\/scientists-made-a-mind-blowing-discovery-more-than-30000-feet-under-the-pacific-ocean\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists made a mind-blowing discovery more than 30,000 feet under the Pacific Ocean"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tCollections of microbes at the bottom of a trench in the Pacific Ocean. | \ufeffInstitute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, CAS\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Titanic lies about 12,500 feet under the ocean. The pressure down there is so immense that even submersibles supposedly built for those conditions can, as we know, tragically fail<\/a>.  <\/p>\n

Now imagine taking a sub nearly three times deeper. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s what an international team of scientists did last summer. Led by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the researchers took a manned submersible to the bottom of deep-sea trenches in an area in the northwest Pacific Ocean, roughly between Japan and Alaska. They reached a depth of more than 31,000 feet.  <\/p>\n

The researchers weren\u2019t looking for a shipwreck. They were interested in what else might be lurking on the seafloor in trenches so deep that no light can reach them.<\/p>\n

It was there that they found something remarkable: an entire ecosystem of animals, living in the darkness. Even more incredibly, those animals \u2014\u00a0and the animals they eat \u2014 derive energy not from sunlight but from chemical reactions. Through a process called chemosynthesis, deep-sea microbes turn chemicals like methane and hydrogen sulfide into organic compounds, including sugars, forming the base of the food chain. The discovery was published in the journal Nature<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Credit: Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, CAS<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Aboard a deep-sea vessel called Fendouzhe, which was equipped with cameras and lights, the researchers encountered abundant wildlife communities, including fields of marine tube worms peppered with white marine snails. The worms have a symbiotic relationship with chemosynthetic bacteria that live in their bodies. Those bacteria provide them with a source of nutrients in exchange for, among other things, a stable place to live.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Among the tube worms the scientists encountered white, centipede-like critters \u2014 they\u2019re also a kind of worm, in the genus macellicephaloides \u2014 as well as sea cucumbers.<\/p>\n

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The researchers also found a variety of different clams on the seafloor, often alongside anemones. Similar to the tube worms, the clams depend on bacteria within their shells to turn chemical compounds like methane and hydrogen sulfide that are present in the deep sea into food.<\/p>\n

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This was the deepest community of chemosynthetic life ever discovered, according to Mengran Du, a study author and researcher at the Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who was on the submersible. Du declined to comment on whether the expedition had anything to do with the potential for deep-sea mining in this region.<\/p>\n

\u201cDiving in the submersible was an extraordinary experience \u2014 like traveling through time,\u201d Du told Vox by email. \u201cEach descent transported me to a new deep-sea realm. As a diving scientist, nothing compares to the thrill of gazing through the observation window with my own eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Unlike other deep-sea ecosystems \u2014 which feed on dead animals and other organic bits that fall from shallower waters \u2014 these trench communities are likely sustained in part by methane produced by microbes buried under the seafloor, the authors said. That suggests that wildlife communities may be more common in these extremely deep trenches than scientists once thought.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe presence of these chemosynthetic ecosystems challenge long-standing assumptions about life\u2019s potential at extreme depths,\u201d Du said.<\/p>\n

Update, August 1, 10 am ET: <\/strong>This story was originally published on July 30 and has been updated to include more details shared by a researcher involved in the expedition. <\/em><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Collections of microbes at the bottom of a trench in the Pacific Ocean. | \ufeffInstitute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, CAS The Titanic lies about 12,500 feet under the ocean. The pressure down there is so immense that even submersibles supposedly built for those conditions can, as we know, tragically fail.   Now imagine taking a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":897,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=895"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":905,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895\/revisions\/905"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}