Five months after the tsunami disaster in South Asia, scientists discovered a “dead zone” at the epicenter of the earthquake that struck on December 26, 2004.
 |
Satellite image of the tsunami |
The “dead zone” was discovered after scientists conducted an 11-hour “tour” in an area located 4 kilometers below the surface of the Indian Ocean.
The investigation team was astonished to find no signs of life in the area. Surrounding the earthquake’s epicenter was a crack approximately 1,000 meters long at the ocean floor, where an eerie silence prevailed. The scientists’ submersible scanned the area, but there were no signs of living organisms.
Professor Ron O’Dor from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, a member of the Ocean Life Survey project, stated, “Deep oceans are usually home to many living organisms. When you arrive here, you expect to see an area quickly filled with marine life. But that did not happen. It is an unprecedented oddity.”
According to O’Dor, typically, anywhere on the ocean floor, there are living organisms present. These may include various fish, mollusks, corals, sponges, crustaceans, and insects.
On December 26, 2004, a magnitude 9.3 earthquake created a 1,000-meter-long fault on the seabed off the western coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. This rupture caused the seawater to be displaced, resulting in a water column approximately 30-40 meters high, which then collapsed, generating the tsunami.
O’Dor explained that the collapsing water column buried the food sources of the organisms living on the ocean floor. “No one has visited a similar area shortly after a disaster. It may take time for things to return to normal. On the other hand, the seawater is very cold at this depth, and life cannot proliferate quickly at a temperature of 4 degrees Celsius,” he said.
The discovery of the “dead zone” at the earthquake’s epicenter is documented in a report from an ambitious project aimed at cataloging all marine life, extending until 2010. Approximately 1,700 scientists from 73 countries participated in this project.
So far, they have recorded nearly 2,000 animals from 21 species, including sharks, various fish, birds, turtles, seals, and sea lions. Some new species have also been discovered by the team in the deepest and most remote areas of the ocean, previously unknown to many.
Scientists believe that all the marine organisms discovered represent only about one-tenth of the total species that exist within the ocean.
