In 2010 the first diving expedition to the springs revealed "a fantastic hot spot for life" in the lake, which lies on the border of Israel and Jordan (see map), said team member Danny Ionescu, a marine microbiologist for the Max Planck Institute in Germany.
The team found several craters—each about 33 feet (10 meters) wide and 43 feet (13 meters) deep—at 100-foot (30-meter) depths on the lake's bottom. The craters were covered with films and sometimes surprisingly thick mats of new bacterial species, Ionescu said.
These tiny communities live near thin plumes of fresh water that shoot from undersea springs, whose presence has long been suspected based on peculiar ripples on the Dead Sea's surface.
To reach the springs, divers searched for abrupt drops along the seafloor while contending with very low visibility.
The World Economic Forum Special Meeting on Economic Growth and Job Creation in the Arab Worldcomes at a crucial time not just for the region, but also for the world at large. The programme is filled with many topics of interest, specifically job creation and its related sub-components of entrepreneurship and poverty alleviation. Those subjects should be addressed collaboratively if we want stability in the region and beyond. I believe these issues should no longer be treated as “unique” or as the “topic of the day”, but rather as a constant factor to be considered and institutionalized within the systems of all countries.
I look forward to hearing from the list of participants made up of experts, renowned thought leaders and decision makers, all of whom will hopefully engage in fruitful discussions to come up with relevant, realistic and effective solutions.
In addition to job creation, the Forum provides an opportunity to present and discuss other important issues facing the region, such as addressing the region’s scarce resources of water, energy and food; improving education; and regional collaboration. Improving education should be a main focus, as it is the basis of everything, and as my parents taught me, it is the one thing that no one can ever take away from you.
On August 23, Libyan rebels raised their flag over Bab al-Aziziya, the once-impregnable complex housing Muammar Qaddafi’s headquarters in Tripoli. Though the dictator himself still remained at large, the overrunning of one of the nerve centers of his regime had enormous symbolic power and seemed to offer definitive proof of the rebels’ strength. And yet on several newscasts, a different story about the uprising was emerging: along with the rebels’ tricolor with white crescent and star, the presidential compound at Bab al-Aziziya was briefly shown flying the maroon and white flag of Qatar, the tiny, gas-rich Arabian emirate more than two thousand miles away.
Though little noted in the West, Qatar’s enthusiasm for the Libyan revolt had been on display from the outset. The emirate was instrumental in securing the support of the Arab League for the NATO intervention back in March, contributing its own military aircraft to the mission. It also gave $400 million to the rebels, helped them market Libyan oil out of Benghazi, and set up a TV station for them in Doha, the Qatari capital. Following the conquest of Bab al-Aziziya, however, it became clear that the Qataris were deeply involved on the ground as well. Not only did Qatar arm the rebels and set up training camps for them in Benghazi and in the Nafusa Mountains west of Tripoli; its own special forces—a hitherto unknown contingent—helped lead the August offensive on the capital. (Although Qatar’s military is one of the smallest in the Middle East, with just over 11,000 men, its special forces were trained by the French and other Western countries and appear to possess considerable skill.) The day the rebels captured Bab al-Aziziya, Mahmoud Jibril, the leader of Libya’s interim government, singled out Qatar for its far-reaching support, despite “all the doubts and threats.”
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