Deep under the ocean, not all ecosystems are built alike.
And, as an international team of scientists has now found, the very deepest depths are dominated by a particular kind of organism. Below a depth of around 4,400 meters , most of the creatures lurking in the darkness have soft, squishy bodies. It's only above that line that hard-shelled mollusks are generally found.
The reason, scientists believe, has to do with the availability of the minerals from which shells are formed. This knowledge could help us protect biodiversity against human activity in these cold, dark, and eldritch environments. "Muddy abyssal seafloors were initially considered to be almost 'marine deserts' when first explored many decades ago, given the extreme conditions for life there – with a lack of food, high pressure, and extremely low temperature," says deep-sea ecologist Erik Simon-Lledó of the National Oceanography Center in the UK.
"But as deep exploration and technology progressed, these ecosystems keep unveiling a large biodiversity, comparable to that in shallow water ecosystems, only found on a much wider spatial spread."
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