What NASA Found Beneath the Great Lakes

The Great Lakes contain roughly 21% of the world's surface freshwater—but what scientists are discovering beneath them is far stranger than their enormous size.

In this video, we investigate 20 incredible discoveries hidden beneath Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario. Researchers from NOAA, NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey, EPA, universities, and Canadian institutions are uncovering underwater sinkholes, ancient landscapes, buried groundwater systems, mysterious microbial ecosystems, shifting lake floors, and evidence that the entire region is still responding to the last Ice Age.

Beneath Lake Huron, scientists have discovered sinkholes containing oxygen-poor, sulfur-rich water and microbial communities that may resemble environments from Earth's distant past. Archaeologists have also identified submerged landscapes where ancient hunters may once have walked before rising water covered the terrain.

But the discoveries don't stop there.

The Great Lakes hide thousands of shipwrecks, buried river valleys, invasive species transforming entire food webs, massive algal blooms visible from space, groundwater flowing beneath the lake floor, and coastlines that are constantly being reshaped.

Even the land underneath the lakes is still moving as Earth's crust continues recovering from the enormous weight of the Laurentide Ice Sheet.

And despite centuries of exploration, scientists still haven't mapped every part of the Great Lakes in high resolution.

So if researchers have already discovered underwater sinkholes, ancient hunting landscapes, hundreds of shipwrecks, hidden groundwater systems, and microbial ecosystems resembling ancient Earth...

What else could still be waiting at the bottom?

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