London: Researchers including one of Indian origin have
discovered deep-sea bacteria at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean
that can almost survive without food - they haven’t eaten for an
incredible 86 million years. The bacteria were unearthed when
researchers drilled into a layer of soft red clay at the bottom
of the Pacific Gyre. It is an area of ocean where nearly nothing
reaches the seabed and most plankton that die in the water
dissolve long before any pieces of them can reach the seafloor
far below. Only very rarely does even a single particle land in
any given spot on the bottom, the Daily Mail reported. “If you
imagine that a grain of sediment falls on the surface, it will
take a thousand years before the next grain will sit on top of
it,” said Hans Roy, from Aarhus University in Denmark. Roy was
part of a voyage in 2009 to sample that ancient sediment and
found living bacteria buried in that clay - despite there being
almost no nutrients down there for them to feed on. At a rate of
around 1 millimeter