Tag Archives: deep sea

The Hunt for Undiscovered Drugs at the Bottom of the Sea

In 2009, Kerry McPhail descended Jacques Cousteau-style towards the Axial Volcano, inside the cramped, 30-year-old little submarine DSV Alvin, with a pilot and another scientist. Three hundred miles off the coast of Oregon, they were collecting tubeworms, bacterial mats and bivalves living near a deep sea volcanic vent. These samples could potentially yield new pharmaceutical compounds—and in turn, new chemical cures and desperately needed antibiotics that are yet undiscovered.

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This Team Discovers 14 New Species An Hour, But They Have An Enemy

You’ve heard that we know more about space than we do the deep ocean. But did you know it’sso unexplored that scientists discover new species just 200-500 feet down, sometimes at a rate of 14 an hour? A (sort of) manmade enemy threatens those efforts though, and they can’t kill, study, and eat it fast enough.

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