• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Life Has Been Found Beneath Hydrothermal Vents For The First Time

August 8, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

An astonishing new ecosystem has just been announced following a discovery inside volcanic caves off Central America. It took the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s (SOI) research vessel Falkor (too) 30 days to complete its expedition, and brought home one of the biggest discoveries in 46 years of studying hydrothermal vents.

Here, on the East Pacific Rise, an underwater robot was able to turn over sections of volcanic crust to reveal a new-to-science ecosystem teeming with worms, snails, and chemosynthetic bacteria that are seemingly thriving despite living in 25°C (75°F) water. It changes the way we now view hydrothermal vents, adding a whole new dimension with ecosystems existing both on their surface and underneath.

Advertisement

“On land, we have long known of animals living in caves underground, and in the ocean of animals living in sand and mud, but for the first time, scientists have looked beneath hydrothermal vents,” said SOI’s Executive Director, Dr Jyotika Virmani, in a statement sent to IFlScience. “This truly remarkable discovery of a new ecosystem, hidden beneath another ecosystem, provides fresh evidence that life exists in incredible places.”

hydrothermal vent life

The underside of a section of volcanic crust reveals some of the species living under the surface of hydrothermal vents.

Image credit: Mónika Naranjo-Shepherd / Schmidt Ocean Institute, CC BY-NC-SA

It’s the first time life has been found underneath hydrothermal vents, which are hot volcanic springs found along the seabed. The team also found evidence that surface species like tubeworms can travel underneath from the surface using vent fluid, enabling them to expand their range.

New hydrothermal vents can appear when tectonic activity sees the plates on Earth’s crust shift and crack. These cracks fill with seawater that gets heated by the magma, making it rise back to the seafloor.

We’ve long understood how new hydrothermal vents appear, but what had people scratching their heads was how the ecosystems that live on them emerge so rapidly. One of the foundational animals of these ecosystems is the tubeworm, but we’ve rarely found its young on hydrothermal vent surfaces.

Advertisement

This new and pivotal discovery about how tubeworms can travel beneath the hydrothermal vent surface goes some way to explaining how they colonize new habitats. They were able to reach their conclusions with the aid of the underwater robot, ROV SuBastian, which glued boxes over cracks in the Earth’s crust and was able to collect some of the animals living below the surface.

life beneath hydrothermal vents

Experiments code-named “Mesh Box Staining Gadgets” were sealed to the seafloor at the Tica Vent to see what, if any, life was beneath.

Image credit: ROV SuBastian / Schmidt Ocean Institute, CC BY-NC-SA

“Our understanding of animal life at deep-sea hydrothermal vents has greatly expanded with this discovery, ” said expedition lead Dr Monika Bright of the University of Vienna. “Two dynamic vent habitats exist. Vent animals above and below the surface thrive together in unison, depending on vent fluid from below and oxygen in the seawater from above.”

The discovery of a new ecosystem is always an exciting one, but it also represents a new consideration in the ongoing debate over the safety of deep-sea mining. Some argue that the sea bed is the path of least destruction when it comes to mining the planet for the metals needed to supply the green battery revolution, but others warn we have a long way to go before we can establish the possible harms of digging in the deep sea.

“The discoveries made on each Schmidt Ocean Institute expedition reinforce the urgency of fully exploring our ocean so we know what exists in the deep sea,” said Wendy Schmidt, president and co-founder of Schmidt Ocean Institute. “The discovery of new creatures, landscapes, and now, an entirely new ecosystem underscores just how much we have yet to discover about our Ocean –and how important it is to protect what we don’t yet know or understand.”

Advertisement

After all, as anyone who’s watched Underwater knows, drilling beneath deep-sea vents can end very badly.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Cricket-NZ players reach Dubai after ‘specific, credible threat’ derailed Pakistan tour
  2. Vatican hopes its pre-COP26 climate event will raise stakes in Glasgow
  3. Why Do People Have Slips Of The Tongue?
  4. Deadly Heart Attacks Peak On Mondays

Source Link: Life Has Been Found Beneath Hydrothermal Vents For The First Time

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • For Only The Second Recorded Time, Two Novae Are Visible With The Naked Eye At Once
  • Long-Lost Ancient Egyptian City Ruled By Cobra Goddess Discovered In Nile Delta
  • Much Maligned Norwegian Lemming Is One Of The Newest Mammal Species On Earth
  • Where Are The Real Geographical Centers Of All The Continents?
  • New Species Of South African Rain Frog Discovered, And It’s Absolutely Fuming About It
  • Love Cheese But Hate Nightmares? Bad News, It Looks Like The Two Really Are Related
  • Project Hail Mary Trailer First Look: What Would Happen If The Sun Got Darker?
  • Newly Discovered Cell Structure Might Hold Key To Understanding Devastating Genetic Disorders
  • What Is Kakeya’s Needle Problem, And Why Do We Want To Solve It?
  • “I Wasn’t Prepared For The Sheer Number Of Them”: Cave Of Mummified Never-Before-Seen Eyeless Invertebrates Amazes Scientists
  • Asteroid Day At 10: How The World Is More Prepared Than Ever To Face Celestial Threats
  • What Happened When A New Zealand Man Fell Butt-First Onto A Powerful Air Hose
  • Ancient DNA Confirms Women’s Unexpected Status In One Of The Oldest Known Neolithic Settlements
  • Earth’s Weather Satellites Catch Cloud Changes… On Venus
  • Scientists Find Common Factors In People Who Have “Out-Of-Body” Experiences
  • Shocking Photos Reveal Extent Of Overfishing’s Impact On “Shrinking” Cod
  • Direct Fusion Drive Could Take Us To Sedna During Its Closest Approach In 11,000 Years
  • Earth’s Energy Imbalance Is More Than Double What It Should Be – And We Don’t Know Why
  • We May Have Misjudged A Fundamental Fact About The Cambrian Explosion
  • The Shoebill Is A Bird So Bizarre That Some People Don’t Even Believe It’s Real
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version