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Scientists Revive 100 Million-Year-Old Microbes from Deep under Seafloor

Researchers work aboard the research drillship JOIDES Resolution with sediment cores gathered from deep beneath the seafloor under the Pacific Ocean. (Handout via Reuters)
Researchers work aboard the research drillship JOIDES Resolution with sediment cores gathered from deep beneath the seafloor under the Pacific Ocean. (Handout via Reuters)
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Scientists Revive 100 Million-Year-Old Microbes from Deep under Seafloor

Researchers work aboard the research drillship JOIDES Resolution with sediment cores gathered from deep beneath the seafloor under the Pacific Ocean. (Handout via Reuters)
Researchers work aboard the research drillship JOIDES Resolution with sediment cores gathered from deep beneath the seafloor under the Pacific Ocean. (Handout via Reuters)

Scientists have succeeded in reviving microbes retrieved from sediment deep under the seafloor in the heart of the South Pacific that had survived in a dormant state for 101.5 million years in research illustrating the resiliency of life on Earth.

The microbes, spanning 10 major and numerous minor groups of bacteria, may be the planet’s oldest-known organisms. The scientists said on Tuesday the microbes were present in clay samples drilled from the research vessel JOIDES Resolution about 245 feet (74.5 meters) under the seafloor, below 3.5 miles (5.7 km) of water.

Up to 99 percent of the microbes, dating back to the age of dinosaurs, that were found encased in the sediment survived despite having essentially no nutrients for all that time.

The researchers, led by Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology geomicrobiologist Yuki Morono, incubated the microbes for up to 557 days in a secure laboratory setting, providing carbon and nitrogen “food” sources such as ammonia, acetate and amino acids. The microbes grew, multiplied and displayed diverse metabolic activities.

“It is surprising and biologically challenging that a large fraction of microbes could be revived from a very long time of burial or entrapment in extremely low nutrient/energy conditions,” Morono said.

The microbes were aerobic - requiring oxygen to live - and oxygen was present in the sediment samples. This indicates, the researchers said, that if sediment accumulates gradually on the seafloor at a rate of no more than a yard (meter) or two every million years, oxygen may remain present to enable such microbes to survive stupendous lengths of time.

“The most exciting part of this study is that it basically shows that there is no limit to life in the old sediments of Earth’s oceans,” said University of Rhode Island oceanographer Steven D’Hondt, co-author of the study published in the journal Nature Communications.

“Maintaining full physiological capability for 100 million years in starving isolation is an impressive feat,” D’Hondt added.

Research published in 2000 described reviving bacteria inside 250 million-year-old salt crystals from Texas, but there is a dispute regarding the age of those microbes.

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Farmed Production of Some Fish - and Seaweed - is Soaring

Farmed salmon -- like the ones grown in pens here in the Australian island state of Tasmania -- are easier to grow than some other fish species. Gregory PLESSE / AFP/File
Farmed salmon -- like the ones grown in pens here in the Australian island state of Tasmania -- are easier to grow than some other fish species. Gregory PLESSE / AFP/File
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Farmed Production of Some Fish - and Seaweed - is Soaring

Farmed salmon -- like the ones grown in pens here in the Australian island state of Tasmania -- are easier to grow than some other fish species. Gregory PLESSE / AFP/File
Farmed salmon -- like the ones grown in pens here in the Australian island state of Tasmania -- are easier to grow than some other fish species. Gregory PLESSE / AFP/File

The amount of farmed seafood we consume -- as opposed to that taken wild from our waters -- is soaring every year, making aquaculture an ever-more important source for many diets, and a response to overfishing.

According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, nearly 99 million tons of aquatic animals (fish, molluscs like oysters and mussels and crustaceans like prawns) were farmed around the world in 2023, five times more than three decades ago.

Since 2022, the farming of aquatic animals has been steadily overtaking fishing around the world -- but with large disparities from species to species.

Fast-growing species

The two biggest sellers on the market in 2023, carp and tilapia, mainly came from freshwater farming, while other widely-consumed fish, like herring, came just from deep sea fishing

Thierry Laugier, a researcher at Ifremer, France's national institute for ocean science and technology, told AFP that fish farmers choose species that grow quickly and with simple requirements, to be able to control the life cycle.

Sales of the most widely farmed fish in Europe, Atlantic salmon, came to 1.9 million tons in 2023, 99 percent of which were farmed.

"We know how to control the ageing or how to launch a reproduction cycle, through injecting hormones," Laugier said.

Asia main producer
Asia is by far the biggest producer of farmed fish, accounting for 92 percent of the 136 million tons -- of both animal and plant species -- produced under manmade conditions in 2023.

"For carp, it comes down to tradition, it has been farmed for thousands of years on the Asian continent," the Ifremer researcher said.

At the other end of the spectrum, sardines and herring are just fished in the oceans, mainly for profitability reasons as some fish grow very slowly.

"It takes around two years to get an adult-sized sardine," Laugier said.

He said farming of some fish has not yet been started as, "for a long time, we thought the ocean was an inexhaustible resource".

Seaweed

Little known in the West, seaweed nevertheless accounts for almost a third of world aquaculture production.

Almost exclusively from Asia, seaweed production increased by nearly 200 percent in two decades, to 38 million tons. It is mainly used in industry, in jellies, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, the expert said.

He said seaweed also has the major advantage of absorbing not just CO2 in the oceans, but also nitrogen and certain pollutants.

"And from an ecological point of view it is better to farm macroalgae than salmon," Laugier said.