On July 23, at a depth of 1.6 miles, sea explorers discovered a dozen sets of holes resembling a track of lines just north of the Azores, close to Portugal’s mainland. Around 18 years ago, along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, similar openings on the ocean floor were first discovered. Their origins are still a mystery.
Then, on Thursday, four more sightings were reported on the Azores Plateau, an underwater region where three tectonic plates converge. The distance between those holes and the expedition’s initial discovery was about 300 miles, and they were about a mile deep.
The holes’ function is unknown to the scientists, but they have seen similar markings before and classify the holes as “lebensspuren,” German for “life traces,” which refer to imprints in sediment that may have been made by living organisms.
“The origin of the holes has scientists stumped,” said a Twitter post from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Ocean Exploration project. “The holes look human made, but the little piles of sediment around them suggest they were excavated by … something.”
The Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which is a portion of a vast deep-ocean range of mountains that stretches for more than 10,000 miles beneath the Atlantic Ocean, is being explored by scientists on an ambitious ocean expedition. The cause of the mysterious holes is one of the questions they’re examining.
According to Dr. Vecchione, a NOAA deep-sea biologist, that final hypothesis wasn’t necessarily that far-fetched. Two main explanations for the holes’ existence were put forth in a paper about them in 2004 by Mr. Vecchione and his co-author, Odd Aksel Bergstad, a former researcher at the Institute of Marine Research in Norway. Both involved marine life that was either burrowing within the sediment and poking holes up, or walking, swimming, or diving above the sediment and poking holes down.
Explorers are interested in learning about what happens when heat generating geologic processes that support life are stopped. Deep-sea coral and sponge communities are being closely monitored because they are “some of the most valuable marine ecosystems on Earth,” according to Derek Sowers, an expedition coordinator on board the NOAA ship Okeanos Explorer.
Expeditions like the ridge voyages, according to Dr. Sowers, are “fundamental” to gaining an understanding of the planet’s biodiversity and “the novel compounds produced by all of these life-forms.”
Scientists also want to learn more about regions where magma heats the seawater, where deep-sea life derives its energy from chemicals rather than the sun, as does most life on Earth.
Numerous comments poured in after the agency used social media to reach out to the public, some of which ventured into speculation. Are the holes made by humans? They might be a message from aliens. Are those submarine-related footprints? They might be the openings for a “deep-sea creature that buries itself under the sand,” but how do we know?
While happy to have discovered the ocean floor holes once more, Dr. Vecchione admitted that he was “a little disappointed” that researchers still didn’t have an explanation.
Then, on Thursday, four more sightings were reported on the Azores Plateau, an underwater region where three tectonic plates converge. The distance between those holes and the expedition’s initial discovery was about 300 miles, and they were about a mile deep.
The holes’ function is unknown to the scientists, but they have seen similar markings before and classify the holes as “lebensspuren,” German for “life traces,” which refer to imprints in sediment that may have been made by living organisms.
“The origin of the holes has scientists stumped,” said a Twitter post from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Ocean Exploration project. “The holes look human made, but the little piles of sediment around them suggest they were excavated by … something.”
The Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which is a portion of a vast deep-ocean range of mountains that stretches for more than 10,000 miles beneath the Atlantic Ocean, is being explored by scientists on an ambitious ocean expedition. The cause of the mysterious holes is one of the questions they’re examining.
According to Dr. Vecchione, a NOAA deep-sea biologist, that final hypothesis wasn’t necessarily that far-fetched. Two main explanations for the holes’ existence were put forth in a paper about them in 2004 by Mr. Vecchione and his co-author, Odd Aksel Bergstad, a former researcher at the Institute of Marine Research in Norway. Both involved marine life that was either burrowing within the sediment and poking holes up, or walking, swimming, or diving above the sediment and poking holes down.
Explorers are interested in learning about what happens when heat generating geologic processes that support life are stopped. Deep-sea coral and sponge communities are being closely monitored because they are “some of the most valuable marine ecosystems on Earth,” according to Derek Sowers, an expedition coordinator on board the NOAA ship Okeanos Explorer.
Expeditions like the ridge voyages, according to Dr. Sowers, are “fundamental” to gaining an understanding of the planet’s biodiversity and “the novel compounds produced by all of these life-forms.”
Scientists also want to learn more about regions where magma heats the seawater, where deep-sea life derives its energy from chemicals rather than the sun, as does most life on Earth.
Numerous comments poured in after the agency used social media to reach out to the public, some of which ventured into speculation. Are the holes made by humans? They might be a message from aliens. Are those submarine-related footprints? They might be the openings for a “deep-sea creature that buries itself under the sand,” but how do we know?
While happy to have discovered the ocean floor holes once more, Dr. Vecchione admitted that he was “a little disappointed” that researchers still didn’t have an explanation.
