A massive algae bloom that turned the Dead Sea red in the 1980s convinced scientists that there was life in that famous inland salt lake after all. A new set of studies by underwater researchers indeed shows that Israel's Dead Sea holds a vast number of living secrets waiting to be revealed.
Positioned in the lowest spot on earth, more than a thousand feet below sea level, the Dead Sea offers plenty more than a nature lover's vista. Its black and slimy mud is a remedy for skin disorders, its salty air a tonic for chronic disorders from asthma to Crohn's disease.
And now -- while they didn't find Cleopatra's slipper or old rowboats from Roman times -- the divers did come across a new series of underwater springs that feed the Dead Sea. Remarkably thriving at the mouth of these underwater springs are new varieties of microorganisms, some never before described by science.
"We went into deep springs up to 150 meters from shore. One wouldn't expect to find artifacts there," says Danny Ionescu, an Israeli doing research at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany.
After several dives, he and his research partner, Christian Lott, took pictures and brought up evidence of carpets of bacteria in many of the places surrounding the springs. "This is not the typical algae that one finds in the Dead Sea," he tells ISRAEL21c.
Read more at Israel21C
