Sunday, March 01, 2009

Lost world of extremophiles hides beneath Great Lakes - image 2 - environment - 27 February 2009 - New Scientist

Lost world of extremophiles hides beneath Great Lakes

Just 20 metres beneath the surface of some of the largest freshwater reservoirs on Earth are deep brine-filled pockets that support unusual colonies of life

A 'finger' of velvety purple microbes was collected from the Middle Island Sinkhole (Image: Thunder Bay Sinkholes 2008)

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A diver sets up a respiration chamber experiment near the purple microbial mats at Middle Island Sinkhole in Lake Huron (Image: Tane Casserley, NOAA) A 'finger' of velvety purple microbes was collected from the Middle Island Sinkhole (Image: Thunder Bay Sinkholes 2008) The shallow Middle Island sinkhole can be seen from the surface; a 9-metre boat provides the scale of the hole (Image: Scott Kendall and Bopi Biddanda, Grand Valley State University) Groundwater filters through the nearby geology, drawing its minerals through the sinkhole at the bottom of the lake (Image: Thunder Bay Sinkholes 2008)
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