Under the so-called hydrothermal vents is found Researchers at the University of Vienna have discovered an ecosystem populated with hitherto unknown life.
Hydrothermal vents are places on the sea floor where heat from the Earth’s interior flows through the sea floor, much like volcanoes on Earth’s surface.
Hydrothermal vents in the sea were discovered in 1977, but no one had thought to look under them – until now.
“This absolutely remarkable discovery of a new ecosystem hidden beneath another ecosystem provides new evidence of life in fantastic places,” said Jyotika Virmani, director of the Schmidt Ocean Institute, in a statement. press release.
The suspicion of the presence of animals was confirmed
The environment around the hydrothermal vents does not look very welcoming, the hot water so hot it is so full of minerals that it looks like black smoke rising from the sea floor like an underground chimney.
However, researchers had already suspected that animals deep on the sea floor moved back and forth between the sea floor and the layer below via hydrothermal vents.
To see if the springs acted as tunnels for some of the animals, the researchers placed a series of lattice boxes over them. When they removed the boxes, they discovered unfamiliar animals living below the surface, moving erratically through the channels of hydrothermal vents.
When the researchers then turned over part of the sea floor, they came across a maze of caves, rocks, strange creatures, and plants.
Diving under the seabed in this video:
While some of the animals resembled the worms, snails, and octopuses we already know from marine life, there were also unnamed giant mollusks, voracious crabs and translucent jellyfish reminiscent of ghosts.
The animals live in warm 25°C waters near hydrothermal vents, and researchers say they depend not on sunlight, but on minerals and nutrients flowing from hot springs.
With this discovery, we are learning more about hydrothermal vents and can now see that animals seem to live above and below the sea floor.
“We’ve known about hydrothermal vents from above for a long time, but this is actually a whole new ecosystem underneath. The discovery of new organisms, landscapes and now an entirely new ecosystem highlights just how much there is still We must learn about our sea and the life deep beneath it.
