Remember those National Geographic series on Astro where they show all the cyanobacterial mats, or consortium of sulfur bacteria at different places? I used to wish I could be an explorer like them to get to see all those stuff. Now, I don't need to 'coz I've seen em!! Who would have thought it's bacteria that makes all these colorful zones in the sediment? Well, Beijerinck did when he invented the enrichment for sulfur-reducers.
Here's some of the pictures we took at Trunk River. The first picture here is of the light pink layer of purple-surfur bacteria that are phototrophic sulfide-oxidizers, using light as source of energy and sulfide as their electron donor. As we go a little bit deeper, there are other phototrophic sulfide-oxidizers that uses light of different wavelength so that they can co-exist with the top layer ones. The reaction producers elemental sulfur which then can be used by sulfur-oxidizers. The sulfur-oxidizers will attached to the insoluble sulfur along the rocks and they are quite visible due to the reflective elemental sulfur.
As we go deeper, the environment becomes anaerobic and all that is available for respiration is sulfate to serve as an electron acceptor. Sulfate reduction is the source of sulfide for the sulfide-oxidizers but some of the sulfide also chemically reacts with iron to form pyrite, which is the black junk of the sediment.
Finally...the best part!
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