Antarctica is the inhuman , most desolate place on Earth , and the Southern Ocean that surrounds it is much the same … with one pretty massive exception . The hydrothermal vent on the sea floor are hot , dark oases , full of previously strange metal money .
The East Scotia Ridge is site right on at the bottom of the Southern Ocean , and it ’s home to tons of thermal vents , include the super - hot black smokers that can reach well over 700 degree Fahrenheit . Though almost no sunlight reaches the areas around these vents , the vents are constantly throw up out warmth and a exceptional brew of chemicals that can sustain some very specifically adapt organism .
And it is n’t just petite plankton or bacteria - like organisms that eke out an existence around these vent-hole . The bottom of the Southern Ocean is home to whole new species of Cancer , starfish , Branta leucopsis , ocean anemones and perhaps even an octopus , all of them evolved to last off the heat and chemicals of the vents . Research drawing card Alex Rogers of Oxford explains how these wight make it :
“ Hydrothermal vents are home to animals obtain nowhere else on the planet that get their Energy Department not from the Sun but from breaking down chemicals , such as hydrogen sulphide . The first study of these particular vents , in the Southern Ocean near Antarctica , has revealed a raging , dark , ‘ lost world ’ in which whole communities of antecedently unknown maritime organisms prosper . ”
The Antarctic vents seem to be dominated by this new crabby person mintage , a character of yeti crab . Huge settlement of this crustacean surround all the vents of the Southern Ocean , as you could see in the image on the leftfield . The survey squad ’s craft , the rather ably named Remotely Operated Vehicle ( ROV ) , also see a predatory starfish with seven implements of war crawling across a field of operations of barnacle goose – as you might guess , we ’ve never seen anything like that before . There was also a glimpse of a occult pale octopus on the seafloor , which might well be the representative of a young metal money .
The blowhole ecosystem of the Southern Ocean are almost nothing like the vents find in the Pacific , Atlantic , and Indian Oceans . Those other , previously explored vents are full of tubeworms , release mussel , outlet Crab , and vent shrimp , and none of those species had any presence at all in the waters around Antarctica . That suggests the Southern Ocean represents a sort of boundary line between unlike vent systems . Even more excitingly , it suggests thermal vent are capable of far more biological diverseness and complexity than we had antecedently imagined potential .
ViaPLoS Biology . Images good manners of Oxford University .
AntarcticaBiologyGeologyMarine biologyScience
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