Water relief as expedition finds undersea supplies

IT turns out the Continental Shelf has been holding a secret from the ages.

- BY CALVIN WOODWARD

Beneath the sea floor off the US northeast lies an enormous reserve of freshwater whose existence was long unknown, then was suspected and now is confirmed.

The first global expedition to drill systematically for undersea freshwater has come away with thousands of samples of it.

And this comes as rising sea levels and other harms from a warming climate threaten freshwater supplies on land.

Expedition 501, a $25 million (€21.3m) collaboration of more than a dozen countries, including the US, drilled 20 to 30 miles (30 to 50 kilometres) off the coast into what is now believed to be a freshwater reserve stretching from New Jersey to Maine.

It's just one of many prospective depositories of freshwater hiding under shallow saltwaters around the world, that might some day be tapped to slake the planet's intensifying thirst.

Associated Press journalists visited the drilling platform last month, some seven hours out to sea by supply boat from Fall River, Massachusetts, to view the operation.

The potential of the undersea freshwater is enormous, but so are the hurdles of getting it out and figuring out who gets to control it. And yet the need is irresistible.