About a decade ago scientists discovered a 'jacuzzi of death' in the Gulf of Mexico, and even though we're about to tell you it kills pretty much anything that goes in it you probably want a dip in there, don't you?
This aquatic feature lies about one kilometre below the surface of the sea and this deadly jacuzzi contains a little pocket of toxic seawater that's about 30 metres wide and four metres deep.
Pretty much anything which swims inside dies, which means there are some very unfortunate crabs and fish that ended up entering this jacuzzi and died because of it.
When a team of scientists found this thing they dubbed it the 'Hot Tub of Despair' because they saw various corpses of creatures that had gone in and never come back out again.
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So why is this little underwater pond such a death zone for things that enter it?
It's got a lot to do with salt.
This deadly jacuzzi is up to five times saltier than the water around it and that salty density has created an environment where the toxic chemicals hydrogen sulphide and methane gas are swirling around in the brine.
This is a life-ender for many sea creatures that try to explore the place, only to end up as a shrivelled corpse being pickled in the salty surroundings.
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Not everything that takes a trip to this sub-aquatic hot tub ends up dying there, as mussels can survive such conditions and indeed the walls of the 'jacuzzi' are lined with them.
The water in this little pond a the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is noticeably warmer than the water around it, which is why the scientists who discovered this phenomenon decided to call it things like a 'jacuzzi' and 'hot tub'.
Such a thing is not unlike the 'death pools' experts found at the bottom of the Red Sea.
These places are deadly to marine life because there's a precious lack of oxygen in them, meaning that any fish that swim inside become stunned and then die.
To make matters worse, those pools are also the favoured hunting grounds of aquatic predators that lurk around and wait for any marine life foolish enough to become stunned by the lack of oxygen.
Both the 'death pools' and this 'jacuzzi of death' do contain some forms of life that can exist in there, tiny little microbial bacteria which endure through these pockets of lethality.
Just be glad you're not an unsuspecting crab in the Gulf of Mexico that crawls inside this place and then dies while having no idea why.
Topics: Science, World News
Joe Harker