Something’s off.A report describes bacteria living in old fuel leaking from two Japanese WWII shipwrecks in Chuuk Lagoon, Micronesia. The strange part is that the fuel contained petroleum hydrocarbons described as toxic to marine life, yet DNA sequencing reportedly found a diverse bacterial community, including groups with members known to break down hydrocarbons.
The researchers sampled fuel from the Shinkoku Maru and Kiyosumi Maru, along with the oil-water boundary at the Shinkoku Maru. They reported 1,505 species-level classifications across the samples. The study identified the bacteria but did not test whether they were actively consuming the hydrocarbons. The researchers say the findings could guide future bioremediation research.
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