Marine Researchers Discover Deep-Sea Complex of Brine Pools in Red Sea

Jul 18, 2022 by News Staff

Scientists from the University of Miami have discovered one 10,000 m2 brine pool and three minor pools of less than 10 m2 in the Gulf of Aqaba, a northern extension to the Red Sea. Dubbed the NEOM Brine Pools, these salty underwater lakes have a unique potential to archive historical tsunamis, flashfloods, and seismicity on millennial timescales.

Brine pools are one of the most extreme environments on Earth, yet despite their high salinity, exotic chemistry, and complete lack of oxygen, these pools are teeming with life. Image credit: Purkis et al., doi: 10.1038/s43247-022-00482-x.

Brine pools are one of the most extreme environments on Earth, yet despite their high salinity, exotic chemistry, and complete lack of oxygen, these pools are teeming with life. Image credit: Purkis et al., doi: 10.1038/s43247-022-00482-x.

Deep-sea brine pools are formed by the stable accumulation of salty solutions in seabed depressions. The Gulf of Mexico, the Mediterranean, and the Red Sea have such conditions and host brine pools.

Even in these three water bodies, brine pools are relatively rare, with only a few tens of discoveries.

They are also small compared to their host basins, ranging in size from only hundreds of square meters to a few square kilometers.

Despite their rarity and diminutive size, brine pools present intense oases of biodiversity in a deep-sea environment that otherwise lacks in number and variety of species.

“Until we understand the limits of life on Earth, it will be difficult to determine if alien planets can host any living beings,” said Professor Sam Purkis, a researcher with the Center for Carbonate Research at the University of Miami.

“Our discovery of a rich community of microbes that survive in extreme environments can help trace the limits of life on Earth and can be applied to the search for life elsewhere in our Solar System and beyond.”

In partnership with OceanX, Professor Purkis and colleagues made their discovery at a depth of 1,770 m using a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) on the OceanXplorer, a highly equipped research vessel capable of exploring the most unreachable places on Earth.

“We were very lucky. The discovery came in the last five minutes of the ten-hour ROV dive that we could dedicate to this project,” Professor Purkis said.

Located close to the coastline, these extremely salty, zero oxygen pools preserve information on tsunami, flashfloods, and earthquakes in the Gulf of Aqaba that took place thousands of years ago.

There are many faults and fractures in the seabed associated with the tectonics of the region in this area of the Gulf of Aqaba.

“The NEOM Brine Pools, as we name them, extend the known geographical range of Red Sea brine pools, and represent a unique preservational environment for the sedimentary signals of regional climatic and tectonic events,” the researchers said.

Their work appears in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.

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S.J. Purkis et al. 2022. Discovery of the deep-sea NEOM Brine Pools in the Gulf of Aqaba, Red Sea. Commun Earth Environ 3, 146; doi: 10.1038/s43247-022-00482-x

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