Abstract
IN an interesting article (C.R. Acad. Sci. Leningrad, 1931), the eminent Russian geochemist, V. Vernadsky, directs attention to the fact that the conditions of temperature and pressure in the depths of oceans should necessitate the existence there of carbon dioxide in a stable liquid state. The chemical interrelations of water and liquid carbon dioxide are as yet unknown, but they must play an important part in the life of organisms at great depths. Their gaseous metabolism should differ greatly from that of organisms inhabiting the surface layers of water, where the expired carbon dioxide can exist as a gas. It is known that the lower limit of plankton is about 200 metres from the surface, while sunrays penetrate very much deeper, and photo-synthesis is theoretically possible for red algse down to 400–500 metres. They do not, however, occur below 200 metres, which means that the limit of their distribution is not governed by the lack of active light rays, but probably coincides with the zone where the gaseous state of carbon dioxide becomes unstable and the liquid state appears. Again, the conditions of gaseous metabolism of numerous organisms in the mud at the bottom of the oceans should be highly peculiar, the gases present there constituting an atmosphere very different from that in the mud of shallow waters. The interesting fact discovered more than a hundred years ago by Biot that the bladder of deep-sea fishes contains pure oxygen, which, according to later discoveries, is produced by special glands, has always remained a physiological puzzle, but it is possible that this is also connected with their life in the zone where only liquid carbon dioxide exists. It is legitimate to ask, for example, whether the oxygen in the bladder is not the result of decomposition of liquid carbon dioxide. All these considerations and examples serve to stress the necessity of organising systematic investigations on the distribution of gaseous and liquid carbon dioxide in different zones of oceans.
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Liquid Carbon Dioxide in Ocean Water. Nature 129, 607 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/129607b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/129607b0