Monstrous bacterial colonies the size of entire countries have been spotten in the Pacific:
A mat the size of Uruguay composed of giant bacteria has been discovered in the mid-depths of the ocean off the coasts of Chile and Peru, report scientists who are working on a series of studies of the ocean’s smallest life forms. These enormous spaghetti-like mats of megabacteria (Thioploca spp.) may play a key role the region’s extremely rich fisheries, says marine biologist VÃctor Ariel Gallardo, vice-chair of the Census of Marine Life Scientific Steering Committee, which released the preliminary results of its survey in early April.
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The megabacteria were discovered in the cold Chilean waters in the 1960s, but, Gallardo said, few scientists could believe at the time that a bacterium could measure two to seven centimetres – big enough to see with the naked eye.
The discovery that these giant bacteria also live in vast colonies is more recent, and it has only been in the past couple of years that funding has been available through the Census of Marine Life to finally investigate this surprising abundance.
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These bacterial mats may be remnants of that Proterozoic period 2.5 billion to 650 million years ago, surviving in the oxygen-starved mid-depths of the ocean.
Such oxygen-minimum layers exist in parts of the world’s oceans where little of this gas mixes down from the surface or up from the cold, oxygenated water that sinks at the poles and oozes like poured cream along the sea floor to other world regions.
Isn’t it a strange, wondrous world?