Scientists from Ocean University in Qingdao, China and the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England have made an incredible discovery that could one day save the planet from the ecological devastation of oil spills. In the deepest depths of the ocean, a team of researchers from England, China, and Russia discovered a bacteria that eats oil. The groundbreaking discovery was published this week in the scientific journal Microbiome . Ocean University professor and leader of the study Xiao-Hua Zhang gave context to the extreme ambition of his team’s research saying, “We know more about Mars than the deepest part of the ocean.” Zhang’s team discovered the groundbreaking oil-eating bacteria in an extremely comprehensive analysis of microbial populations in the western Pacific Ocean’s 10,994-meter-deep Mariana Trench (for reference, Mt. Everest is a mere 8,848 metres tall)–one of very few in-depth explorations of the microbiology of the trench’s ecosystem living […]