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A barrel that possibly contained caustic alkaline waste rests on the ocean floor off the coast of Santa Catalina Island. Note the mysterious halo.
(
David Valentine
/
UC Santa Barbara
)
Topline:
The public learned a few years ago about thousands of barrels of DDT that had been dumped off the Southern California coast. New research published today shows that a large number of dumped barrels also contained a caustic alkaline waste that’s having a marked impact on sea life.
A complex study: Researchers worked to identify white halos seen around the dumped barrels; however, it proved exceptionally difficult as they’re about 2,500 feet below the ocean surface.
Why it matters: The pollution has so altered the chemistry of the sea floor that bacteria typically found in extreme ocean environments — like those near hydrothermal vents — are growing there.
Read on … to learn more about the waste’s effects on sea life.
Between the 1930s and 1970s, companies dumped barrels of toxic waste, including DDT, off the coast of Southern California, from Santa Cruz Island south to Mexico.
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Listen: Researchers find lingering affects of waste dumped from the 1930s through 1970s.
The revelations came to light several years ago, and since then researchers have been investigating the various sites using remotely operated vehicles thousands of feet beneath the surface.
There have long been questions about a specific subset of barrels that looked like they were surrounded by concrete and white halos. On Tuesday, researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences with a potential explanation.
They believe that the barrels contained caustic waste so alkaline that it changed the chemistry and the microbial makeup of the organisms on the seafloor. What that waste is remains a mystery.
Samples taken from around the barrels showed pH levels as high as 12 (normal is 7 to 8) and were dominated by alkalophilic bacteria adapted to high-pH environments, like those around hydrothermal vents. Colonies of bacteria farther from the barrels were far more diverse and consistent with what’s been found in other parts of the area.
“ We've created these naturally occurring extremophile environments in these little patches in the ocean wherever these barrels landed that had the caustic waste,” said Paul Jensen, professor of microbiology at Scripps and co-author of the study.
Dumping occurred off the coast of Southern California from Santa Cruz Island to Mexico.
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Environmental Protection Agency
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When researchers tested pieces of the concrete-looking stuff, they discovered it was brucite, or magnesium hydroxide, and that the white halos are calcium carbonate, both of which form in high-pH environments.
They estimate it could take thousands of years for these changes to resolve.
