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Message:

> No light, no carbonates, no shells:
> 
> https://www.sciencealert.com/a-hidden-line-deep-in-the-ocean-divides-animals-into-two-camps?utm_source=ScienceAlert+-+Daily+Email+Updates&utm_campaign=6bdb519cc5-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fe5632fb09-6bdb519cc5-366098385
> 
> "Deep under the ocean, not all ecosystems are built alike.
> 
> "And, as an international team of scientists has now found, the very deepest depths are dominated by a particular kind of organism. Below a depth of around 4,400 meters (14,436 feet), most of the creatures lurking in the darkness have soft, squishy bodies. It's only above that line that hard-shelled mollusks are generally found.
> 
> ***
> 
> "'But as deep exploration and technology progressed, these ecosystems keep unveiling a large biodiversity, comparable to that in shallow water ecosystems, only found on a much wider spatial spread."
> 
> ***
> 
> "Using deep-sea robots, Simon-Lledó and his team collected a large database of images from an abyssal plain known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, extending 5,000 kilometers (3,107 miles) at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean between Mexico and Kiribati at depths between 3,500 and 6,000 meters.
> 
> "They painstakingly cataloged all the animals they could find larger than 10 millimeters in size from these images. They indexed more than 50,000 abyssal creatures – and they noticed a marked difference in the types of animals found in shallower depths compared to those at the very deepest parts of the zone.
> 
> ***
> 
> "Hard shells are formed from calcium carbonate, which diffuses through the ocean from the surface. Below a certain depth, however, insufficient calcium carbonate remains, leading to a lack of it on the seafloor, to be taken up by hard-shelled fauna.
> 
> ***
> 
> "'Overall, this reflects a much higher ecological heterogeneity, at multiple scales, than was previously expected for benthic assemblages across the northeast Pacific abyssal seabed," the researchers write in their paper.
> 
> "'This overlooked heterogeneity, stemming from geochemical and climatic forcing, has crucial implications for future ecological and macroecological research in abyssal communities and for the success of regional-scale conservation strategies implemented to protect biodiversity in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone and probably in other abyssal areas targeted by deep-sea mining worldwide.'"
> 
> Comment: it seems life can survive anywhere and adapt to any set of conditions with its ecosystem intact. The many photos are worth a look.