London: Scientists have discovered a unique oil eating bacteria in the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the Earth’s oceans, a finding that may pave way for sustainable ways to clean up oils spills.
The Mariana Trench is located in the Western Pacific Ocean and reaches a depth of approximately 11,000 metres. By comparison, Mount Everest is 8,848 metres high.
“We know more about Mars than the deepest part of the ocean,” said Xiao-Hua Zhang of the Ocean University in China, who led the study. To date, only a few expeditions have investigated the organisms inhabiting this ecosystem.
One of these expeditions was organised and led by noted marine explorer and Academy Award-winning film director James Cameron, who built a specialised submersible to collect samples in the trench.
“Our research team went down to collect samples of the microbial population at the deepest part of the Mariana Trench — some 11,000 metres down.
We studied the samples that were brought back and identified a new group of hydrocarbon degrading bacteria,” said Jonathan Todd, from the University of East Anglia in the UK. (PTI)
