Sugar Lining Ocean Beds: Comparable to 32 Billion Coke Cans

Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology have found mountains of sugar beneath seagrass meadows across the world's ocean beds, equivalent to the amount of sugar in 32 billion Coke cans, NDTV reported.

Seagrass meadows are extremely efficient at capturing carbon and are one of the world's most efficient carbon-capturing ecosystems.

According to the team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, mountains of sugar have been discovered beneath seagrass meadows across the world.

Seagrass meadows are one of the world's most effective carbon-capture ecosystems.

According to the institute's records, seagrass stores nearly twice as much carbon as land-based forests and does so 35 times faster.

When the seabed around these meadows was examined, massive amounts of sugar were discovered in their soil systems.

Seagrass Sucrose

Manuel Liebeke, the head of the research group conducting the study at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, stated that the massive amounts of sugar are about 80 times higher than previously measured in marine environments.

Liebeke explained that to put it in perspective, the seagrass rhizosphere is estimated to roughly contain between 0.6 and 1.3 million tons of sugar, mostly in the form of sucrose.

That is equivalent to the amount of sugar in 32 billion Coke cans.

Seagrass meadows are one of the most endangered habitats on the planet, despite their recent discovery.

They are rapidly declining in all oceans, according to the institute, with up to a third of the world's seagrass already lost.

Liebeke further explained that when looking at how much blue carbon, or carbon captured by the world's oceans and coastal ecosystems, is lost when seagrass communities are decimated, their research shows that it is not only the seagrass itself but also the large amounts of sucrose beneath live seagrass that would result in a loss of stored carbon.

According to the calculations presented in the study, if microbes degrade the sucrose in the seagrass rhizosphere, at least about 1.54 million tons of CO2 would be released into the atmosphere globally, which is equivalent to the amount of CO2 emitted by 330,000 cars in a year.

Seagrass Rhizosphere

In their study, E. Maggie Sogin described seagrasses are marine angiosperms that support ecologically and economically important ecosystems along the coasts of all continents except Antarctica.

Seagrasses provide important services to humans as ecosystem engineers.

Seagrass meadows, for example, are important fishing habitats because they stabilize the seafloor, remove pollutants, and drive biogeochemical cycling.

These are excellent at absorbing carbon from the atmosphere and burying it as organic matter in their sediments.

It can bury carbon 35 times faster per unit area than rainforests.

Furthermore, seagrasses also release large amounts of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) into the environment, which is thought to be partially metabolized by microorganisms in the sediments surrounding the rhizomes and roots of the seagrass.

Angiosperms excrete up to 30% of their primary production as organic compounds into their soils to attract beneficial microbial partners, defend themselves against pathogens, and communicate with other individuals when they are on land.

These root exudates feed complex microbial food webs that are responsible for long-term carbon storage.

The interaction of seagrasses with the microbial communities in their sediments is poorly understood.

The research showed that seagrass sediments are veritable sweet spots in the sea, containing surprisingly high concentrations of simple sugars, primarily sucrose.

The presence of phenolic compounds in the seagrass rhizosphere inhibits microbial consumption of these reactive sources of organic carbon, according to our findings.