A "jacuzzi of despair" keeps a salty seafood stew simmering at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, stocked with fish and other marine creatures venturing too near.
Scientists discovered the deadly lake more than 3,000 feet below the Gulf of Mexico, said Nature World News. It was first seen in 2014 using a remotely-operated underwater robot.
A recent study of the underwater lake published by the journal Oceanography showed its water contains deadly bacteria and salt deposits that kill any animal because the brine is up to five times saltier than the surrounding water.
“It was one of the most amazing things in the deep sea,” Erik Cordes, associate professor of biology at Temple University and one of the scientists who helped discover the lake, told The Seeker. “You go down into the bottom of the ocean and you are looking at a lake or a river flowing. It feels like you are not on this world.”
“It’s warm, but super salty,” said Scott Wankel, a scientist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, per Fox News. “When [marine creatures] fall in they die and get pickled and preserved.”
In a video, a remotely operated vehicle known as the Hercules can be seen navigating through the underwater jacuzzi of despair.
“These larger organisms really don’t like to be in this fluid – or maybe they just come here to die,” a scientist can be heard saying in the video, noted the Los Angeles Times.
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