Team spirit in the deep sea
Marine microorganisms are characterized by an amazing ability to cooperate. This cooperation probably shaped life on earth early on - and perhaps made our existence possible in the first place.
At a depth of around 800 meters, the flickering headlights of the submersible "Alvin" reveal a colorful oasis. Plush carpets of white, yellow and orange microorganisms cover the seabed, which is interspersed with mussel fields. Red rock bass watch the underwater vehicle suspiciously with their protruding, cloudy, milky eyes; at the same time it bubbles from bizarrely shaped lime chimneys. The cone of light offers unexpected insights and lures us deeper and deeper into this alien underwater world, most of which lies hidden in the dark.
On that expedition in 2010, one of us (Marlow) along with two other researchers had squeezed into the Alvin's narrow titanium glass sphere a few hours earlier. We pressed our noses to the circular portholes as we descended through the blue of the deep. Our destination was the hydrate ridge off the Oregon coast - a rocky area of seafloor where significant amounts of methane are being squeezed out of the earth's crust. As more and more of these undersea sources of methane have been discovered (450 specimens were uncovered in a 2016 expedition in the eastern Pacific alone), scientists have become increasingly interested in how these regions affect the environment. Finally, methane is considered a powerful greenhouse gas: Although it makes up just 0.00018 percent of the atmosphere, it contributes 20 percent to global warming potential. It is estimated that about a tenth of the methane released into the atmosphere each year comes from those sources on the sea floor. Such an uncontrolled flow of gas bubbles would have a devastating effect on our climate - if there weren't something that prevents excessive gas accumulation in the atmosphere: microorganisms…
