A research team has detected fresh water in two underwater canyons near the Lofoten archipelago.
“The surprise of seeing fresh water coming straight from the seabed was truly remarkable,” says the marine geologist Wei-Li Hong, member of the study group.
A remotely piloted submarine departing from a research vessel collected and analyzed the water in 2017. Some sort of leak seemed to originate from a pocket of fresh water present under the seabed and no one gave it much thought until it was almost discovered fortuitous.
The gifts of the ice age
“A group of fishermen told us that they had obtained fresh water from the sea, so pure that they could make coffee with it. In the Nordbreigrunnen area, a few kilometers from the village of Meløy,” adds Hong.
A phenomenon that originated in the last glaciation. The "blanket" of ice that enveloped Norway has melted and ended up under the earth's crust, falling with such force that it filled the underground cracks forming actual lakes.
“A geological process that began millions of years ago, when water was trapped under sediments. Now find ways out through the cracks underground and return to the surface,” explains the researcher.
The amount of water is incalculable, and originates from a kilometer deep, but its underground extent is still unknown.
Even in the United States there is fresh water under the ocean
The Norwegian one is not an isolated case. The discovery follows what scientists from Columbia University and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts made in June. A huge source of fresh water also lies beneath the Atlantic Ocean, along the east coast of the United States.
“It's a phenomenon identical to the Norwegian one,” comments the marine geologist Jochen Knies, project manager involved in the research.
The Atlantic Ocean aquifer extends along the coast from the southern edge of New Jersey to northern Massachusetts. According to CNN, scientists estimate that the basin contains enough water to fill 1.2 billion Olympic-sized swimming pools. It is the largest underwater aquifer yet found on the planet.
New resources
Discoveries like those in the USA and Norway will certainly not solve the global water crisis, but they suggest the possibility that drinkable water resources are almost everywhere in the world, just looking for discoverers.
“Even in apparently arid areas there is a strong possibility that there are water resources in underground or underwater pockets,” says Knies.
It would be enough to stop looking for oil and start drilling in search of water.
The details of the Norwegian research: Wei ‐ Li Hong et al, Discharge of Meteoric Water in the Eastern Norwegian Sea since the Last Glacial Period, Geophysical Research Letters (2019). DOI: 10.1029 / 2019GL084237
