Heavily Ventilated
When scientists looked around the strange vents at the bottom of the sea, they found a stunning alien landscape — and, almost by accident, found way more life than expected.
As National Geographic reports, this deep-sea expedition led by the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research is the first of its kind to find larger animal life underneath the seabed than the microbes and larvae known to congregate there.
Known as hydrothermal vents, these underwater volcanic ridges have long been known to attract all manner of microscopic marine life to the otherwise largely uninhabited seafloor. Until this expedition’s robotic dive, however, scientists had not yet seen what’s underneath the seafloor near these vents.
Using a remote-controlled submersible robot, researcher Sabine Gollner and her team had been trying to collect deep-sea rock samples at the Tica Vent, a hydrothermal vent on the Eastern Pacific Rise tectonic barrier to the west of the Americas. Their goal had been to check out the larvae and other small organisms that lived on those strange underwater volcanic rocks, but because they were so heavy, the Royal Netherlands researchers had to come up with a different plan of action.
After directing the submersible bot to lift up sections of seabed near the vent, the marine biologists were astounded by what they found: tiny cavities coursing with tubeworms and snails that had previously only been seen on the seafloor’s surface before.
“This was totally unexpected,” Gollner, who also co-authored a study on the findings in the journal Nature Communications, told the Associated Press.
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Shock and Awe
The researchers believe that the larvae for these marine critters may be traveling through the vents on currents of “warm fluid” — a finding that could help us understand how life operates in the deep.
“The vent ecosystem in this area is not restricted to what we see above,” Gollner told NatGeo, “but it also includes life in the subsurface.”
Along with having implications for the conservation of “extremophiles” like these subsurface grubs against the threat of deep-sea mining, scientists also say that this discovery may provide clues about how life could operate further out in our Solar System.
“If there is life beyond Earth,” remarked Boston College biologist Heather Olins, who was not involved in the study, “it’s not going to be solar-powered.”
More on marine monstrosities: These Mighty Morphin’ Jellyfish Have a Mind-Blowing Survival Trick Up Their Sleeves
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