University of Rhode Island graduate student Justine Sauvage returned recently from a two-month expedition aboard a Japanese ship studying life deep beneath the seafloor.

In the process of the research effort, the international team of scientists and crew aboard the 210-meter ship D/V Chikyu set a record for drilling into the sediment. They drilled 2,446 meters (over 8,000 feet) below the seafloor off the coast of Japan; the previous record was 2,112 meters (a little under 7,000 feet).

“There are deeply buried coal beds off the coast of Japan that are undergoing lots of transformation. They give off chemicals that might stimulate microbial life in the overlying sediment. I’m studying the limits of life in these deep sea sediments,” said Sauvage, a native of Brussels, Belgium who is completing her master’s degree and will begin a doctoral program at the URI Graduate School of Oceanography next semester.

“The pores in the sediment contain water, and the chemistry of the water tells us about the microbes that live down there,” Sauvage said. “It tells us what microbial processes are going on, what they are doing and eating and the chemicals they are releasing. It gives us information about their metabolic activity.

“We see life everywhere, but where are the limits of life on Earth? If we can understand all of the places where life is capable of living, then that may give us a link to finding life on other planets,” she added.
For further information, please see the related press release.