Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology report that mountains of sugar have been discovered hiding underneath seagrass meadows across the world’s oceans.
Seagrass meadows are amongst the top carbon-capturing ecosystems — just one square kilometre of seagrass stores nearly twice as much carbon as forests on land at a rate 35 times faster, according to the Institute.
To better understand these carbon-capturing powerhouses, the scientists conducted a study off the Italian island of Elba where they took samples of seagrass meadows and their surrounding sediments. Their data revealed that sugar concentrations underneath the seagrass were at least 80 times higher than those found in other marine ecosystems.
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“To put this into perspective: we estimate that worldwide there are between 0.6 and 1.3 million tons of sugar, mainly in the form of sucrose,” stated Manuel Liebeke, a scientist at the Institute, in a press release.
“That is roughly comparable to the amount of sugar in 32 billion cans of Coke!”
Read more: yahoo
