Active bacteria cluster found deep in earth

Mar 19, 2013 |

Scientists have discovered a large and highly-active bacteria community in the world’s deepest oceanic trench on the Pacific sea floor.

The international research team studied one of the most inaccessible places on Earth: the bottom of the Mariana Trench located nearly 11 kilometres below sea level in the western Pacific, which makes it the deepest site on Earth. They documented a highly active bacteria community in the sediment of the trench — even though the environment is under extreme pressure almost 1,100 times higher than at sea level.
In fact, the trench sediments house almost 10 times more bacteria than in the sediments of the surrounding abyssal plain at much shallower water depth of 5-6 km water. Deep sea trenches act as hot spots for microbial activity because they receive an unusually high flux of organic matter.

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