Scientists have discovered what may be the least inhabited place in the ocean. The seafloor sediments in the middle of the South Pacific have fewer living cells than anywhere else measured, a new study found. Oceanographer Steven D’Hondt of the University of Rhode Island and colleagues took a boat out to the middle of the ocean and collected cores, or cylindrical samples of sediment, from the bottom of the sea about 2.5 to 3.7 miles (4 to 6 km) deep. They found about 1,000 living cells in each cubic centimeter of sediment - a tally that is roughly 1,000 times less than in other seafloor sediments. ‘People were previously just taking cores in parts of the ocean fairly close to shore and assuming their results were typical of the ocean as a whole,’ D’Hondt told LiveScience. D’Hondt suspects that further research will show other areas out in the middle of the ocean may be similarly devoid of life. He and his team detailed their results in the June 22 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The area they explored in the South Pacific is what’s called a gyre, where […]