Unique Oil Eating Bacteria Found In Mariana Trench – Deepest Part of Our Oceans

Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com – A unique oil eating bacteria was discovered in the deepest part of the Earth’s oceans – the Mariana Trench, located in the Western Pacific Ocean.

The Mariana Trench reaches a depth of approximately 11,000 meters. (By comparison, Mount Everest is “only” 8,848 meters high). The discovery was made when researchers from China and Russia analyzed organisms inhabiting the region’s ecosystem.

“We know more about Mars than the deepest part of the ocean,” Prof Xiao-Hua Zhang of the Ocean University in China, who led the study, said in a press release.

As Dr Jonathan Todd, from University of East Anglia’s School of Biological Sciences, explained, researchers  studied the samples that were brought back and identified a new group of hydrocarbon degrading bacteria.

“Hydrocarbons are organic compounds that are made of only hydrogen and carbon atoms, and they are found in many places, including crude oil and natural gas.

“So these types of microorganisms essentially eat compounds similar to those in oil and then use it for fuel. Similar microorganisms play a role in degrading oil spills in natural disasters such as BP’s 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. We also found that this bacteria is really abundant at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.”

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In order to understand the source of the hydrocarbons ‘feeding’ this bacteria, the team analyzed samples of sea water taken at the surface, and all the way down a column of water to the sediment at the bottom of the trench.

“We found that hydrocarbons exist as deep as 6,000 meters below the surface of the ocean and probably even deeper,” Dr Nikolai Pedentchouk, from UEA’s School of Environmental Sciences, said.

“A significant proportion of them probably derived from ocean surface pollution.

“To our surprise, we also identified biologically produced hydrocarbons in the ocean sediment at the bottom of the trench. This suggests that a unique microbial population is producing hydrocarbons in this environment.”

“These hydrocarbons, similar to the compounds that constitute diesel fuel, have been found in algae at the ocean surface but never in microbes at these depths.

Written by Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com Staff Writer