With composting, you usually want to work with a lot of air and oxygen, aerobic composting. But that is obviously difficult under the water where oxygen is more limited. So what exactly happens when large amounts of bio-matter breaks down in a lake or the sea as opposed to on land and with plenty of oxygen? And are there any man-made composting systems designed to work while fully submerged?
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When you put food in the trash and it starts to smell bad, that’s because tiny creatures called bacteria and fungi are eating the food and breaking it down. This is called decomposition.
When this happens under the water, like in a lake or the ocean, there isn’t as much air, so the tiny creatures that break down the food can’t use the air to help them eat. Instead, they use other things, like hydrogen sulfide, to help them break down the food.
This process makes bad-smelling gases, like methane, which can harm the environment. People have made special containers, called anaerobic digesters, that help break down food without air, but these containers aren’t for making compost for plants. They’re for cleaning up waste water.
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