Can a strange Pacific creature save the world?

A multinational research group found that the deepest sea floor of the Pacific presents a mysterious creature gobbling up carbon dioxide.

While the world is in crisis because of increasing global carbon dioxide (CO ₂ ) emissions, in the deepest part of the Earth there are rows of gluttonous "monsters" capable of consuming up to 10% of CO _2. discharged in.

Pacific - (artwork from the Internet).

The team from South Korea, Germany and the United Kingdom discovered the creature during the study of the regional ecosystem of Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone (CCFZ), a gulf of up to 4 km long in the Pacific bottom.

They are strange and gluttonous bacteria, with a favorite dish of CO ₂ , mainly from organic matter depositing to the deep sea floor such as dead fish, plankton and other forms of organic debris.

Professor Andrew K. Sweetman from the Center for Earth Science and Technology and Marine Science at Heriot-Watt University (Edinburgh, England) said these bacteria possess a large amount of CO2 and chemical copper. This enters their biomass through a strange process and cannot be determined.

Later, it was this bacterium that became a nutritious food source for deep-sea creatures, right on the abyss that previously the team thought there were no living organisms.

If the bacteria spread across the global ocean floor, they could "eat" up to 200 million tons of CO ₂ a year, equivalent to 10% of the CO ₂ that oceans emit, becoming an important part of the ocean. Deep sea carbon process is balanced. They surveyed a few more points hundreds of kilometers apart and also found similar bacteria.

In the recent paper published in the journal Limnology and Oceanography, the authors said they are still investigating the exotic ecosystem in these waters, hoping to be able to exploit it. Applications that benefit the living environment.

Last year, another team also found a group of bacteria living in a lake deep beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet that "eats " methane, a greenhouse gas that is threatening the climate. Thanks to these bacteria, the amount of methane entering the water and exiting the atmosphere is minimized.

The world is facing the dizzying increase of toxic emissions, threatening the species' living environment, so the scientific community is expecting the above findings to create a way to limit breakthrough emissions. with safe and sustainable biological therapies.