The Deep Sea

444 readers

2 users here now

Creatures of the deep sea (or information/discussion about it!) This can range from fish to tunicates to anything deep sea! Remember to source your content.

founded 2 years ago

Dark oxygen made by deep sea 'batteries' (www.bbc.co.uk)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

2 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

About half the oxygen we breathe comes from the ocean. But, before this discovery, it was understood that it was made by marine plants photosynthesising - something that requires sunlight.

Here, at depths of 5km, where no sunlight can penetrate, the oxygen appears to be produced by naturally occurring metallic “nodules” which split seawater - H2O - into hydrogen and oxygen.

Several mining companies have plans to collect these nodules, which marine scientists fear could disrupt the newly discovered process - and damage any marine life that depends on the oxygen they make.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

I can almost bet that the nodules are the substrate for a bacterium that thrives and facilitates that chemosynthesis.