Marine biologists investigated an underwater volcano near New Zealand and found about 300 microorganisms previously unknown to science, Live Science reports.
These microorganisms belong to the category of extremophiles - life forms that prefer extreme conditions that would kill any person. Such are, for example, tardigrades, like the black mushrooms of Chernobyl, that feel good with a high radiation background. Prokaryotes living under enormous pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Thermophilic bacteria that breed in the geysers of Yellowstone Park.
Brothers is an underwater volcano with constant activity located in the Pacific Ocean, 320 kilometers northeast of New Zealand. It is located at a depth of 1350 meters, the height of the volcano is 500 meters. Using a remotely controlled robot, marine biologists scraped Brothers volcanic deposits and analyzed the DNA. As a result, the team identified 285 different types of new microbes previously unknown to science: 202 new species of bacteria and 83 species of archaea, single-celled microbes that tend to live in extreme conditions. All these microorganisms lived in different parts of the volcano: some preferred to live in calderas, others swam in sulfurous gases.
The research is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
You can see what Brothers looks like in the video here.