Scientists have found a new ecosystem in the Pacific Ocean

Scientists have discovered a new ecosystem at a depth of 9 kilometres in the Pacific Ocean, The Washington Post reports.

An expedition to one of the deepest points in the world's oceans, located between Alaska and Kamchatka, has led to a stunning discovery. At a depth of about 30,000 feet (more than 9 kilometres), researchers from China's Institute of Deep Sea Science and Engineering recorded for the first time the existence of a complete ecosystem that feeds not on sunlight but on chemical compounds emitted from the seabed.

"This is a completely new phenomenon, nothing like this has ever been found before," said Dominic Papineau, an exobiologist at the Deep Sea Laboratory in Sanya.

The discovery marks the publication in the journal Nature, which describes the unusual organisms that live in the extreme conditions of the "hadal zone". Among them are tube worms with red tentacles, glowing molluscs, white bristly creatures inhabiting cracks in the sea floor.

Researcher Mangran Du, who went down in the bathyscaphe Fendouzhe, admitted: "I didn't know what to expect. What we saw was just incredible."

The study region covers the Aleutian and Kurilo-Kamchatka trenches. According to Lisa Levine, a professor of oceanography at Scripps Institution, these findings "change the way we think about life in ocean trenches."

Until recently, scientists believed that life in such depths was only possible through the fall of organic debris from the upper layers of the ocean. But a new discovery shows that chemosynthesis, a process in which microorganisms turn chemical compounds (like methane) into organics to feed other creatures, thrives there.

For example, methane-absorbing bacteria live inside clams and tube worms. These bacteria produce nutrients for their hosts, creating a closed ecosystem.

"Previously, scientists have only surmised the existence of such communities at depths of more than 9 kilometres, but this is the first study to confirm their presence at multiple locations at once," explained marine biologist Leslie Blakenship-Williams.

The discovery could also have implications for space biology: if similar systems exist in extreme environments on Earth, they may also be possible in the subglacial oceans of Jupiter's satellites, such as Europa.

"If subsurface oceans on other planets have existed for billions of years, as on Earth, then similar ecosystems may have evolved there," Papineau believes.

The expedition lasted 40 days, during which 23 dives were made and in 19 cases traces of life were recorded. This suggests that such chemosynthetic communities may be much more widespread than previously thought.