Quote:
Originally Posted by theunchosen
The bacteria don't actually require sunlight. They run on Chemosynthesis. Currently these bacteria operate on the ocean floor in no light conditions.
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But the energy still has to come from somewhere. It takes a certain amount of energy (the same amount that you got by combining them in the first place) to split that CO2 molecule into C and O2. Those ocean floor chemosynthetic bacteria might be getting their energy from e.g. iron & sulfur reactions, but that only works as long as there's a supply of whatever they need to "eat" and "breathe".
As for growing vertically, that only works up to a point. There are X number of photons in sunlight. The algae in the top inch of the column intercept some fraction of those, the ones in the inch below that the same fraction of what's left, and so on. Eventually you reach a depth below which there's effectively no sunlight available.