New presentation about the deep sea with Head of Center Ronnie Glud from HADAL and former Head of Center Bo Barker Jørgensen
A new presentation about the deep sea with Head of Center Ronnie Glud, from the DNRF’s Center for Hadal Research (HADAL) at the University of Southern Denmark, and Professor Bo Barker Jørgensen, who was Head of Center at the DNRF’s Center for Geomicrobiology, will be live-streamed on November 3. The deep-sea has always been hard to explore because of its size and depth, but recently, researchers have found unexpected life deep down at the seabed that reveals new meanings for life on Earth. The presentation was live-streamed on November 3, 2020, from 19 to 21.
The deep sea, with its size and depth, is hard to explore thoroughly. It is not easy to perform measurements and collect materials. At the same time, previously, it was erroneously thought that the process in the deep sea did not have an effect on living conditions on Earth. However, recently, researchers have found unexpected life deep down at the seabed that says otherwise.
Head of Center Ronnie Glud, from the DNRF’s Center for Hadal Research (HADAL), and Professor Bo Barker Jørgensen, who was Head of Center at the DNRF’s Center for Geomicrobiology, are doing a presentation about the deep sea. The presentation was live-streamed on November 3.
News about an unknown world
The presentation will cover the research done on the deep sea area called the hadal trenches, a name that denotes the deepest parts of the ocean. The zone was named for Hades, the god for the dead and the king of the underworld in Greek mythology. In this zone, 27 graves can be found in the place where the seabed plates and the continental plates meet. The graves stretch over thousands of kilometers along the continents, and these graves have been shown to be an oasis for life in the deep sea.
The researchers, with the help of advanced robots connected to scientific equipment, have been able to operate under the extreme pressure found in the deep sea graves. There are no animals in the deep sea; rather it is a world of microorganisms. In the deep sea, they live on dead algae and organic remains left by animals buried in the seabed.
The organic material has slowly converted over millions of years. Bacteria live here in slow-motion, where they have a generation time that lasts up to thousands of years. Even though there might be only a fraction of the buried organic material left, it leaves sufficient oxygen in the atmosphere, so that humans and animal life can breathe.
Both Glud and Barker Jørgensen are some of the researchers who go on expeditions with ships that have long drills. This equipment gives them the ability to drill far down into the seabed and explore the deep sea. It was only a couple of years ago that the first scientific drill expedition was completed, which resulted in new knowledge about the Baltic Sea’s climate development over the last 15,000 years, as well as new knowledge about the bacterial communities have lived in the deep sea as far as the Ice Age.
The presentation will be live-streamed to more than 200 locations in Denmark to around 10,000 people. Access is free, but you have to sign up (to follow the Covid-19 regulations).