Odd Species of Bacteria found in the Mariana Trench

Mariana TrenchHave you ever wondered what kind of weird creatures call the “bottom” of our planet home? The Mariana Trench, more specifically the Challenger Deep, rests at an incredible seven miles below the ocean’s surface. It is the deepest point in Earth’s oceans. Many questions have been asked about life in the Mariana Trench such as what kind of life could live in such a dark, cold, and pressured habitat? Well, there are many kinds of life down there and one of the most recent ones is an odd species of bacteria.
A team of Danish scientists discovered these strange creatures and reported their findings. They thrive in large amounts at the bottom of the Challenger Deep. The researches deployed an autonomous instrument that was meant to examine mud at the bottom of the trench and to measure oxygen dynamics. Data received by the team eventually proved that a new group of microbes lived there and consumed higher amounts of oxygen than neighboring species.
As you can imagine, the conditions there are way different from shallower waters. These microbes rely on one particular type of food. They really can’t move around too much since it is pitch black, so they let the food come to them. Organic matter from the surface or water only a few hundred feet above, floats miles all the way down to the bottom to provide food for these weird living things. Actually, only one to two percent of the particles make it all the way down to the bottom of the ocean. These deep-dwelling single-celled organisms aren’t the only ones who eat this. The home of the bacteria is about 1100 times the pressure for us, but it has no effect on them like it would on humans.
This community of microscopic organisms lives about a foot or so underneath the top of soft sediment resting on the bottom of the ocean. The incredible amount of the weird germ-like creatures is like this only because the Mariana Trench is a big hole. It is as simple as that. I giant pit is in the ocean, so a lot of stuff falls in, such as sediment. The soft material is perfect for the creatures as far as maintaining temperature, restricting harmful animals, and getting the food to them.
What we call germs up here has actually taught us a lot about the unpredictable depths of the oceans. A lot of people just think of an open plain with nothing but a few weeds and an occasional alien-looking fish at the bottom of the ocean, but this discovery has taught us how nourishing and life-sustaining such a “dead” ecosystem can be. A few recent discoveries near the oceanic crust have shown results of fantastic oceanic bacteria populations. They have triggered many other expeditions in effort to find areas with larger than normal bacterial populations there might be. There is a lot about our oceans that we don’t know. This incredible discovery is only a fraction of the other intriguing secrets that await us.

Is there other organisms that exist in such large amounts at the bottom of the ocean?

Would these bacteria be able to survive in shallower areas?

Is there even more of them deeper in the sediment of Challenger Deep?

4 thoughts on “Odd Species of Bacteria found in the Mariana Trench

  1. I found this article to be very interesting! Before reading this article I though Mount Everest would have been the longest point in the world. Even though it turns out that The trench is deeper by about a 1 1/2 miles! That made me think it was a very astonishing thing. http://geology.com/records/deepest-part-of-the-ocean.shtml . I also thought it was weird that they were able to get their own food from other organisms. Overall I thought this article was mind blowing!

  2. This blog was very interesting! I would never think that any species could be able to live that far down in that dark of a space. I looked father into the research looking for any father species that could be living in same conditions. I looked at the website: http://www.seasky.org/deep-sea/ocean-layers.html I learned that the deepest zone is called the Hadalpelagic zone, the Mariana trench is located in this zone. I learned the temperature is just above freezing and the pressure in eight tons more per square inch. This website gives a lot of facts about al the zones and is very cool to read. After reading I don’t think there is anything deeper than the challenger. I also think that the bacteria would not be able to survive in shallower waters. It has adapted to the dark depths of the ocean and is there for a reason. It must have to be in that type of condition or it wouldn’t be there.

  3. I found it amazing that oceanic species can still be widely unknowns to us. I think that it is extraordinary that we know so little about oceans and that there is still much to be discovered. Some scientists hypothesize that approximately Two-Thirds Marine Species Remain Unknown! There are about 700,000 to one Million species in the ocean, and only one third of them have been discovered. Just imagine the great amount of life that the ocean can hold and how biologically diverse it is. For all we know there could be animals of such terrific size that some thing of its magnitude has not been seem since the Jurassic Period and has been lurking undiscovered in the depths of the ocean for hundreds of thousands of years. Imagine the new biological and scientific advances we could make with these animals. Just to think that the world is filled with such endless wonder in unbelievable. Go to the fallowing site to see the proof behind my statistics:
    http://news.discovery.com/animals/whales-dolphins/marine-species-unknown-121115.htm

  4. I found you article very interesting! I didn’t know that there was a bacteria that lived that deep under the sea. I didn’t think it was possible for something to live down there. I thought it was really cool that organic matter just comes to them. They don’t even really have to hunt for their food! I found an article about how they discovered the bacteria at the bottom of the trench. It was discovered by James Cameron in 1989. The article talks about more of the history of finding the bacteria. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/2013/04/14/what-lives-at-the-bottom-of-the-mariana-trench-more-than-you-might-think/

Leave a Reply to jacobrspring15 Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *