Discovery of the deep-sea NEOM Brine Pools in the Gulf of Aqaba, Red Sea

Abstract

Deep-sea brine pools represent hypersaline environments famed for their extremophile microbes. With anoxia entirely excluding bioturbating megafauna, brine pools are also conducive to the pristine preservation of sedimentary sequences. Here we use bathymetric and geophysical observations to locate a complex of brine pools in the Gulf of Aqaba consisting of one 10,000 m2 pool and three minor pools of less than 10 m2. We further conduct sediment coring and direct sampling of the brine to confirm the sedimentary and environmental characteristics of these pools. We find that the main pool preserves a stratigraphy which spans at least 1200 years and contains a combination of turbidites, likely resulting from flashfloods and local seismicity, and tsunamigenic terrestrial sediment. The NEOM Brine Pools, as we name them, extend the known geographical range of Red Sea brine pools, and represent a unique preservational environment for the sedimentary signals of regional climatic and tectonic events.