Discovered 'mystery warrior' against climate change?

Scientists have discovered that there are many unknown organisms living in the seabed sediments and these huge numbers of organisms may play an important role in sequestering and sequestering carbon. as well as for the ocean food web.

According to a study published in the journal Science Advances earlier this month, while studying the DNA sequences of more than 400 sediment samples around the world - collected between 2010 and 2016, scientists were amazed. when discovering nearly two-thirds of which were never known.

"The level of biodiversity of seabed sediments influences the function, structure and evolution of ecosystems," said Craig Smith, a deep-sea scientist at the University of Hawaii (USA) and is a co-author of the above study, commented.

Scientists have shown that organisms in the seafloor sediments are at least three times more diverse than in the upper sea layers.

Another groundbreaking aspect of the study was the discovery of a wide variety of plankton that fell to the seabed and stored CO2 in the sediments, said Tristan Cordier, the study's lead author and senior researcher. of the NORCE Institute (Norway).

The mechanism, nicknamed the "biological carbon pump," helps regulate global climate by transferring atmospheric carbon to the seafloor, where it can be buried for millions of years. Scientists estimate that the ocean absorbs about 48% of the CO2 emitted from fossil fuel burning.

Bloomberg news agency said the discovery was announced at a time when the world was speeding up preparations to mine the seabed in search of valuable minerals used to make electric car batteries.

The International Seabed Authority, which oversees the mining of the seabed of the United Nations, is drafting regulations so that the practice could begin within the next three years. The first area to be exploited is likely to be the Clarion-Clipperton area (CCZ) - a large sea in the Pacific Ocean stretching from Hawaii to Mexico.

The CCZ contains billions of cubes of polymetallic nodules, potato-sized blocks of rock that are rich in cobalt, nickel and other raw metals used to make batteries.

Researcher Andrew Gooday at the National Oceanographic Center (UK), co-author of the study, revealed that many of the sediment samples they collected were east of the CCZ. Large-scale mining of the seabed could push many species here to extinction.