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There Are Holes on the Ocean Floor. Scientists Don't Know Why.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/28/science/holes-ocean-floor-mystery.htmlhttps://archive.ph/dZIIO
There Are Holes on the Ocean Floor. Scientists Don’t Know Why.
Similar openings on the sea floor were first spotted 18 years ago along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Their origins remain unknown. Scientists are asking the public for their thoughts.
By Christine Chung
July 28, 2022 Updated 4:08 p.m. ET
While researchers explored a volcano in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge on July 23, they observed several sets of holes in the sediment that remain a mystery to scientists. Credit...National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Deep in the waters along a volcanic ridge in the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, sea explorers using a remotely operated vehicle to examine largely unexplored areas found a pattern of holes in the sand.
During the dive, north of the Azores, near Portugal’s mainland, on July 23, they saw about a dozen sets of holes resembling a track of lines 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 underwater terrain where three tectonic plates meet. Those holes were about a mile deep and about 300 miles away from the site of the expedition’s initial discovery.
The scientists don’t know what the holes are, but they have encountered similar markings before and consider them to be “lebensspuren,” German for “life traces,” referring to impressions in sediments that could be the work of living organisms.
The question the scientists are posing, to themselves and to the public in posts on Twitter and Facebook, is: What is creating those marks on the ocean floor?
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32 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
Is it the Kraaken or is Atlantis making a comeback? What about Godzilla?
Clearly...
Just kidding of course.
No idea what cause/created that, I'll leave to far smarter people than me.
The wider view shows what looks to be excavated material surrounding each hole - the way ants mound the dirt around their openings in the ground.
So there might be some sort of outgassing event going on, which is carrying the sub-surface material up to the ocean floor.
In 1854, Cyrus West Field conceived the idea of the telegraph cable and secured a charter to lay a well-insulated line across the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. Obtaining the aid of British and American naval ships, he made four unsuccessful attempts, beginning in 1857. In July 1858, four British and American vessels–the Agamemnon, the Valorous, the Niagara, and the Gorgon–met in mid-ocean for the fifth attempt. On July 29, the Niagara and the Gorgon, with their load of cable, departed for Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, while the Agamemnon and the Valorous embarked for Valentia, Ireland. By August 5, the cable had been successfully laid, stretching nearly 2,000 miles across the Atlantic at a depth often of more than two miles.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-transatlantic-telegraph-cable-completed
This video of fighting fish shows the holes better.