London, Jan 11 (ANI): In a new study, scientists have revealed the details of the world's most extreme deep-sea volcanic vents, 5 kilometres down in a rift in the Caribbean seafloor.
The undersea hot springs, which lie 0.8 kilometres deeper than any seen before, may be hotter than 450 degrees centigrade and are shooting a jet of mineral-laden water more than a kilometre into the ocean above.
Despite these extreme conditions, the vents are teeming with thousands of new species of shrimp that has a light-sensing organ on its back. And having found yet more "black smoker" vents on an undersea mountain nearby, the researchers suggest that deep-sea vents may be more widespread around the world than anyone thought.
A team of researchers led by marine geochemist Doug Connelly at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton and marine biologist Jon Copley of the University of Southampton has revealed details of the world's deepest known "black smoker" vents, so-called for the smoky-looking hot fluids that gush from them.
During an expedition in April 2010 aboard the Royal Research Ship James Cook, the scientists used the National Oceanography Centre's robot submarine called Autosub6000 and a deep-diving vehicle, HyBIS, manufactured by the British firm, Hydro-Lek to locate and study the vents at a depth of five kilometres in the Cayman Trough, an undersea trench south of the Cayman Islands.
The vents, which the team named the Beebe Vent Field after the first scientist to venture into the deep ocean, are gushing hot fluids that are unusually rich in copper, and shooting a jet of mineral-laden water four times higher into the ocean above than other deep-sea vents.
Although the scientists were not able to measure the temperature of the vents directly, these two features indicate that the world's deepest known vents may be hotter than 450 degrees centigrade, according to the researchers.
"These vents may be one of the few places on the planet where we can study reactions between rocks and 'supercritical' fluids at extreme temperatures and pressures," Connelly said.
The team found a new species of pale shrimp congregating in hordes around the six-metre tall mineral spires of the vents. Lacking normal eyes, the shrimp instead have a light-sensing organ on their backs, which may help them to navigate in the faint glow of deep-sea vents.
The researchers have named the shrimp Rimicaris hybisae, after the deep-sea vehicle that they used to collect them.
The researchers also found black smoker vents on the upper slopes of an undersea mountain called Mount Dent. Mount Dent rises nearly three kilometres above the seafloor of the Cayman Trough, but its peak is still more than three kilometres beneath the waves.
The mountain formed when a vast slab of rock was twisted up out of the ocean floor by the forces that pull the plates of the Earth's crust apart.
"Finding black smoker vents on Mount Dent was a complete surprise," Connelly said.
"Hot and acidic vents have never been seen in an area like this before, and usually we don't even look for vents in places like this," he said.
Since undersea mountains like Mount Dent may be quite common in the oceans, the discovery suggests that deep-sea vents might be more widespread around the world than previously thought.
The study has been published in the journal Nature Communications (ANI)
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