During a recent expedition to the largely unexplored depths of the northern mid-Atlantic rim, marine researchers stumbled upon something strange: tiny drill holes in the sediment, all arranged in relatively straight lines.
Holes on the ocean floor wouldn’t normally be too disturbing, but these were incredibly neat and tied in an evenly spaced pattern. If not for the fact that they are located about 2.5 km (1.6 mi) below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, in the middle of nowhere, they could have been engineered by human hands.
Researchers aboard the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ship Oceanus Explorer used a robotic submarine to explore an underwater volcanic ridge north of the Azores archipelago near mainland Portugal on July 23.
Now NOAA researchers are asking for the public’s help in finding out what they just saw.
About a week later, researchers identified four more sets of holes 483 km (300 mi) away, 1.6 km (1 mi) deep. “While these holes look almost man-made, the small mounds of sediment around them suggest that they were excavated. We tried but only to peer into the holes and use tools from a remotely operated vehicle. They were not able to hit,” NOAA wrote in a press release.
To add to the mystery, this is not the first time that scientists have seen such holes. They have puzzled researchers for at least 20 years. A 2004 paper reported sightings in the same area that same year. The researchers called them “lebensporin,” which translates to “life signs” in German, to describe the holes.
“The source of the burrows or how they were constructed is unknown, but the raised sediment may indicate excavation or excavation and removal of a non-living organism,” the authors wrote at the time.
“None of our nearby ups gave any indication of organic entities living in the openings. Whether the holes were connected below the sediment surface or not.”
Since then, we haven’t found out much about the holes, but hopefully this mission can provide some answers. As part of a recent expedition, researchers were able to use a submarine suction device to sample sediment from around the holes in hopes that this might shed light on whether something lives there. Or not.
After working on both the recent research and the 2004 paper, NOAA deep-sea biologist Michael Vecchione is interested in what’s hiding beneath the mid-Atlantic sand.
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“There’s something important going on and we don’t know what it is,” Vecchione told Christine Chung of The New York Times. “It highlights the fact that there are still mysteries.”
Spanning an impressive 16,000 kilometers (10,000 miles), the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is the longest mountain range in the world – despite the fact that most of us have never laid eyes on it.
We don’t know much about the iconic region, which is why it’s the focus of NOAA’s Voyage to the Ridge 2022 campaign from May to September 2022.
They are also looking at the Charlie Gibbs Fracture Zone, which blocks the ridge, and the Azores Plateau, which lies east of the mid-Atlantic ridge and where three major tectonic plates meet.
