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    Deep Ocean Life Lives Off Waste

    By Katharine Gammon | LiveScience.com – Tue, Jan 31, 2012

    Life-sustaining light penetrates only the top 600 feet of the Earth's vast oceans. So in the cold, dark waters of the deep sea, life must find another source of food.

    Decades of research on the life that clusters around deep-sea hydrothermal vents has hinted at the importance of light-free food webs that use chemicals spewed out by the vents as energy sources. But a recent analysis by Jack Middelburg at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands suggests that another system — waste recycling — could be more important in supporting life in the deep. And life forms using this system of energy don't need to be confined to the areas around vents.

    "Although the hydrothermal vents make for nice pictures, the dispersed chemoautotrophs are far more important," Middelburg tells OurAmazingPlanet.

    Chemoautotrophs are single-celled creatures that consume carbon dioxide and other inorganic materials and convert them to forms that can then be used by other organisms— a process known as carbon fixation.

    "We all eat food, and we respire. And the urea and ammonia we excrete as urine. But with the bacteria, there's bacteria that consume that ammonia and use the energy it contains to fix inorganic carbon," Middelburg said.

    He found that, for the deep ocean, these chemoautotrophs are the biggest source of new carbon; the energy they produce is 100 times more important than energy gleaned from hydrothermal vents.

    Middelburg says that over the next few months, he will use a mass spectrometer with very high resolution to look in detail at the organisms that are involved in his calculations.

    This story was provided by OurAmazingPlanet, a sister site to LiveScience.

     

    4 comments

    • Abaris
      Abaris  •  3 mths ago
      why is there always an idiot that makes a political reference to an article that has none?
    • safeinthewoods
      safeinthewoods  •  3 mths ago
      ... it will live forever on just half of the waste that's on the surface ...
    • Eric1
      Eric1  •  3 mths ago
      'Deep Ocean life Lives Off Waste.' And apparently, so does the GOP.
      • Jay
        Jay 3 mths ago
        You are sick, get help. Not everything is political.
      • hen
        hen 3 mths ago
        NOW DON'T FORGET YOUR PRECIOUS DEM'S
    • Apt Consideration
      Apt Consideration  •  3 mths ago
      On land it is the same story. The bacteria that break down waste into usable components far outnumber any of the other life forms. Nice to see consistency here.
     Post a comment
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