Posted on behalf of Katherine Rowland
A research expedition exploring deep sea vents in the Antarctic has revealed a flourishing community of previously unknown species.
On the floor of the Southern Ocean, researchers have discovered what they describe as an “explosion of life”, including new species of anemones, starfish, and a type of hairy-chested yeti crab, clustered by the thousand around the hydrothermal vents. Findings also include an as-yet-unidentified octopus and a predatory seastar with seven arms crawling across a field of barnacles.
“It wasn’t just one creature, virtually everything we saw was new to science,” the lead researcher, marine biologist Alex Rogers of the University of Oxford, UK, told Discovery News.
The research team, which also included scientists from the University of Southampton, UK, and the British Antarctic Survey, used a remotely-operated vehicle to explore the East Scotia Ridge in January 2010. More than a mile below the water’s surface, the ridge features hydrothermal mineral chimneys and ‘black smokers’ spewing plumes into waters whose temperatures can reach up to 382 C. Their findings were published today in the online journal, PLoS Biology. (Here’s the press release)
Many of the species found around hydrothermal vents obtain their energy from the soup of chemicals pouring forth, a process known as chemosynthesis that involves, for example, oxidizing sulfides. The first deep sea hot springs were discovered in 1977 on the Galapagos Rift, where geologists commissioned by the Woods Hole Institute were shocked to find animals could survive in such an inhospitable environment.
“The environment at those depths is a dark, barren seabed, that suddenly around the vents gives way to an explosion of life,” marine chemist Douglas Connelly of the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) in Southampton, UK, told Nature.
While the team was surprised by their findings, they were equally surprised by what was absent. “Many animals such as tubeworms, vent mussels, vent crabs, and vent shrimps, found in hydrothermal vents in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans, simply weren’t there,” says Rogers.
“Vent biogeography is far more complex than we had realized,” says marine biologist Jon Copley of the NOC, who was also involved with the research. “Vents are a model system for understanding the dispersive evolution of deep sea ecologies, where systems lie like islands across the sea floor.”
Copley was part of a team which last week announced a similar discovery: a host of new animals thriving in the boiling waters of the so-called Dragon Ven” in the Indian Ocean. One of the more surprising finds was a variety of yeti crab similar to that found in the Antarctic.
As ocean temperatures rise, however, and fishing and extractive industries move into deeper waters, the vent ecosystems may be in peril, warns Copley. “We need to have a better understanding of how these species disperse and evolve in order to make better decisions for managing these resources responsibly.”
Images and video: Oxford University/NERC ChEsSo Consortium