Deepest Hydrothermal Vents Teem With Strange Shrimp
by Stephanie Pappas
Researchers exploring the seafloor south of the Cayman Islands have discovered the world’s deepest-known hydrothermal vents, an underwater hotspot teeming with bizarre shrimp with light receptors on their backs. Neighboring the deep vent field was an even more surprising find: an area of vents high on the slopes of Mount Dent, an undersea mountain far from the magma-rich areas where heated vents are usually found.
“It’s somewhere you wouldn’t expect to get hot hydrothermal vents,” study researcher Jon Copley of the University of Southampton told LiveScience. “It was a real surprise.”
That’s because Mount Dent is what’s known as an oceanic core complex, a chunk of crust “twisted out of the Earth” by the rifting forces that pull Earth’s tectonic plates apart, Copley said. Oceanic core complexes are common near mid-ocean ridges where the crust is rifting, he said, so this area may hold an unexplored trove of deep-sea vents…
(read more: Live Science) (image: Univ. of Southampton - NOC)
