Q&A: How are deep sea animals able to withstand the tremendous water pressure in the ocean?
Posted by admin | Posted in Deep Sea Animals | Posted on 16-02-2011-05-2008
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Question by Matt C: How are deep sea animals able to withstand the tremendous water pressure in the ocean?
It takes special materials to assemble a deep sea diving vessel capable of holding against deep sea water pressure, yet organisms inhabiting this zone are able to do so naturally. I don’t understand the biological mechanism that allows this.
Best answer:
Answer by Irv S
Think just a bit. ” It takes special materials to assemble a deep sea diving vessel”,
because that vessel must carry air at ‘surface’ pressures within it.
Deep sea animals are mostly non-compressible fluid, and don’t even ‘feel’
pressure changes at all.
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Survival of the fittest, They are the most used to it, and have been for Millions of years, This is why we have penguins in the antarctic, and how Extremeophiles learn to live in extreme environments, it’s because they’ve learned to adapt.
The mechanism depends on organisms.
Seals and elephant seals can dive up to a mile (sperm whales go much deeper than that). All these animals seem to share the same secret: Instead of fighting the pressure, they let it collapse their lungs completely. Some oxygen remains in their lungs, but they mostly store it in their muscles, where it’s needed; their muscle tissue contains much higher concentrations of oxygen-binding myoglobin than ours does.
Deep sea creatures on the other hand, to cope with the pressure, they are rather small, usually not exceeding 25 cm in length. Also, scientists have discovered that the deeper these creatures live, the more gelatinous their flesh and more minimal their skeletal structure. These creatures have also eliminated all excess cavities that would collapse under the pressure, such as swim bladders.
Some fish in the deep sea floor have lung-like swim bladders to control their buoyancy: They move up in the water column by secreting gas into the bladder and inflating it, and down by reabsorbing gas into their blood.
Scientish such as Yayanos, Somero, and others have discovered a few of the adaptations that permit deep-sea bacteria— and the cells of higher organisms— to thrive under high pressure. For one thing, deep-sea creatures make their cell membranes of squishier stuff. Cell membranes are layers of lipids (fats) penetrated by proteins that, among other functions, channel nutrients, wastes, and signaling molecules in and out of the cell. If the lipids are too rigid, the channels close up— and high pressure, like low temperature, makes any kind of fat more rigid. “So deep-sea animals and bacteria tend to build their membranes with relatively fluid lipids,” says Somero. “Instead of butter they use something more akin to vegetable oil.” That is, compared with surface-dwelling organisms, they use more unsaturated and less saturated fat.
I hope this helps you understand how deep sea creatures survive high pressure.