Lakes... 650ft Beneath the Waves!

Imagine you're on a leisurely submersible cruise beneath the Gulf of Mexico, when all of a sudden you find yourself at the shores of a mussel-encrusted lake... but you're already underwater!



That's the position researchers found themselves in when stumbled upon this area of super-salinated water, home to hearty bacteria the mussels feed on. Effectively, the brine in the lake and nearby brine streams is so dense that it separates from the regular salt water, and is extremely difficult to penetrate; the submersible literally bounced off of its surface!

How do underwater lakes form?

Underwater lakes are brine pools. And believe it or not, even though people often refer to the ocean as the briny blue, while it's constituted of salt water it is not brine... Brine refers to water with an extremely high concentration of salt, higher than that of normal sea water. It is produced through salt tectonics, or the movement of large salt deposits.

The lake featured was discovered in the Mexican Gulf. During the Jurassic period the waters here were shallow and became cut off from the ocean. The area soon dried out, leaving a thick layer of salt and other minerals up to 8km thick. When ocean water returned after the region rifted apart, the super-saline layer at the bottom of the Gulf became an underwater lake. Now brine, which is continually released from a rift in the ocean floor, feeds the lake.

Source





Pictures source

Spectacular! Thank you for sharing the most interesting information - I hadn't a clue there were such places. What a wonderful planet we have.

Here, we can truly say "AS ABOVE SO BELOW"

S&F

Whew - that is amazing.

reply to post by elevenaugust


Just like on Spongebob!

I remember seeing this on tv a couple years ago and I thought it was amazing. Really, who would ever imagine such things were possible! Makes you wonder what else there is to discover.

very interesting stuff. does the water glow like that or is that lighted? it says nothing submersible can penetrate it. i wonder though if life can survive under it.

reply to post by Atombombchicken


Well if you look in the last picture, there's a diver swimming in the water so it must not be impenetrable. Probably much tougher, for lack of a better word, than regular salt water.

Also, the article mentions a specific type of bacteria that live in the "lakes" so I would assume something else could possibly be down there. Although it would probably be limited to only microbial lifeforms.

This is beautiful. Thanks for posting it. I really don't have anything to say except how amazing our world and universe are. Those pictures are wonderful to look at and ponder. I literally got a tear in my eye reading and looking at this. So wonderful.

reply to post by isthisreallife


thabks for pointing that out. i appreciate it. i sometines i read too fast

Produced salt beds 8km thick!!?!?

Wow.

I'm surprised they can see anything down there amongst all the Corexit.

dont these present a danger to submersibles? something to do with buoyancy i think and differences between water salt levels vs fresh water or something?

more on topic s@f for you these are the kind of posts that brought me to ats in the beginning so thank you very much for this article defiantly needed to see something beautiful today

Great way to hide a sub for stealth

that's a lot of corexit!
wow, amazing dynamics.
would be interesting to see what life forms live in that. if any.
thx for sharing.

While we're on the subject of brine, I suggest you take a look at the following video, its fairly amazing.

www.ebaumsworld.com...

For those who cant/wont watch it, it is brine freezing on the way down in to the depths, like an icy shard coming straight from the bottom of sea ice as it melts, before "flowing" (its a timelapse) across the ocean floor decimating sea life in its path!

reply to post by elevenaugust


I now know what I want my relatives to do with my body after I die! I want someone to dress up my skeleton in a fisherman's outfit.....Then somehow deposit me down at the edge of the this underground lake...In a sitting position, with a fishing pole in my hand, and the line going off into the underground lake. Complete with tackle box to my left side, and a beer sitting beside my right.

Why? Just to freak out the next group of scientists who come down to explore this place!

wow thats crazy! i didnt even know things like this existed! simply beautiful, i wonder what kind of creatures live under there & how deep it goes?

Are those trees fossilized and left over from the time when this lake wasn't under the ocean?

Those lakes look like they arent too far from where the mocando welll was. It would be interesting if these same subs went back to the same area to see what it looks like now.

reply to post by elevenaugust


The last picture is amazing. Floating on water under water. Superb!

Beautiful example of nature at its best.

But there are rivers in the ocean, phenoms like the "Gulf Stream" where huge currents (rivers) of warm water travel to the north and rivers of cold water travel south etc.

All influences our weather/climate on the Earth.

What a wonderful planet, imagine all the other ones out there.

BTW, do those "long things" look like tree trunks/branches or something?
Surely not trees but some other plant life? wow.
What other secrets are hidden under the oceans that were once above the surface. Amazing.