There Are Holes In The Bottom Of The Ocean. Scientists Don T Know Why.

During the dive, north of the Azores, near the Portuguese mainland, on July 23, they saw about a dozen holes that look like line marks on the ocean floor at a depth of 1.6 miles. Then, about a week later, on Thursday, there were four more sightings on the Azores Plateau, which is undersea land where three tectonic plates meet. These holes were about a mile deep and about 300 miles away from the site of the mission’s original discovery. The question scientists are asking themselves and the public in posts on Twitter and Facebook is: What creates these marks, with holes 4 or more inches apart and lines stretching 5 feet to more than 6 feet? at the bottom of the ocean? “The origin of the holes has misled scientists,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Project for Ocean Exploration said on Twitter. “The holes look man-made, but the small piles of sediment around them suggest they were excavated by… something.” Nearly two decades ago, just about 27 miles away from the location of the current mission’s original observation, scientists spotted similar holes during an exploration, said Emily Crum, a NOAA spokeswoman. But the passage of time hasn’t provided clear answers, said Michael Vecchione, a NOAA deep-sea biologist who participated in that project and is also on part of this latest mission. “There is something important there and we don’t know what it is,” Dr. Vecchione said. “This highlights the fact that there are still mysteries out there.” The holes are just one of the questions scientists are exploring on an ambitious ocean mission as they explore the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which is part of a huge mountain range in deep oceans that stretches more than 10,000 miles below the Atlantic Ocean. NOAA experts are looking for answers during three missions called Voyage to the Ridge 2022, which began in May and will conclude in September, on trips that will take them from the waters off Newport, RI, to the Azores and back in Puerto Rico in the Caribbean. Explorers want to know what lives in the continuum of underwater volcanoes and what happens when the geological processes that generate the heat that supports life stop. They pay close attention to deep-sea coral and sponge communities, which are “some of the most valuable marine ecosystems on Earth,” said Derek Sowers, mission coordinator aboard the NOAA ship Okeanos Explorer. Dr Sowers said missions such as the Ridge Voyage projects were “fundamental” to understanding the planet’s biodiversity and “the novel compounds produced by all these life forms”. And they want to learn more about regions where seawater is heated by magma, with deep-sea life drawing energy and chemicals from that source, rather than the sun like most life on Earth. “This has expanded our understanding of the conditions under which life can occur on other planets,” said Dr. Sowers. After the agency took to social media in an effort to engage the public, dozens of comments poured in, some delving into speculation. Are the holes artificial? Could they be a sign from aliens? Are they tracks left by a submarine? Could the breathing holes be a “deep sea creature that buries itself under the sand”? That latest guess wasn’t necessarily so far-fetched, Dr. Vecchione said. In a paper on the holes discovered in 2004, Mr. Vecchione and his co-author, Odd Aksel Bergstad, a former researcher at the Institute of Marine Research in Norway, proposed two main hypotheses for why the holes exist. Both involved marine life, either walking or swimming over the sediment and burrowing down, or the reverse scenario, burrowing into the sediment and burrowing. The holes seen on Thursday appeared to have been pushed from underneath, Dr Vecchione said. The rover’s suction device collected sediment samples to examine whether there was an organism inside the holes, Dr. Sowers said. Dr Vecchione said that while he was pleased to have encountered the ocean floor holes again, he was “a bit disappointed” that scientists still had no explanation. “It reinforces the idea that there is a mystery that we will one day discover,” he said. “But we haven’t figured it out yet.” A final dive, which will be broadcast live, remains to be done on the second mission of the series, NOAA said. The third mission starts on August 7th.