Despite over 70 percent of the earth’s surface being covered with water, it remains as mostly a mystery to scientists. Scientists suggest that over two-thirds of all marine life have not been named or identified. Every year they come across hundreds of new species.
Here’s a fun fact for you: Did you know that the ocean has lakes and rivers that exist underwater? It’s hard to believe but nonetheless it is a true fact. This phenomenon happens when seawater seeps through thick layers of salt and when the salt dissolves, it makes depressions in the seafloor. Since salt makes for denser water, it will settle into these depressions which makes it look like a lake or river formed underwater.
They are sometimes known as brine pools and a group of researchers have recently found one situated in the Gulf of Mexico
They named it the ‘Jacuzzi of Despair’ because it’s extremely high levels of salt makes the pool lethal to crabs and fish which find themselves in it
Scott Wankel who is a biogeorchemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution said of the pool “It’s warm, but super salty, when [sea creatures] fall in, they die and get pickled and preserved”
The brine pool actually can sustain life as well but only on it’s outer walls which are surrounded by specially adapted giant muscles, tube worms and shrimp, they feed off the hydrogen sulphide and methane the pool gives off
Watch this amazing discovery first-hand below:
