Volcanoes of the Deep Sea

Ecology

June 25, 2014

Volcanoes of the Deep Sea

The volcanoes of the sea are located in abyssal depths, 320 Km. North of the Galapagos Islands and 2,600 meter depth. There is a submarine that was specially built to get that deep into the sea. The submarine’s name is Alvin. Most of the information gathered down there was thanks to the submarine Alvin.

Alvin was dropped in the Galapagos Rift, which has 8,600 ft. of depth, a pressure of 3,851 psi., and a water temperature of 32 degree Fahrenheit. The submarine Alvin gets two hours to go 2 and half miles underwater, two hours to work, and two hours to get up due to oxygen issues.

A scientist founded a fossil called Paleodictyon, which is a fossil older than dinosaurs. This is an incredible discovery done by the scientist. Here we could see a picture of the fossil Paleodictyon. That is located and founded in the deep sea

In the deep sea there is no photosynthesis, a different process called chemosynthesis is the one that takes place in the deep sea. In the movie we learned about the specie Riftia Pachyptila which is a worm that has a mutualistic relationship with bacteria. We also learned about hydrothermal vents (volcanoes) which were active for a few decades. Those volcanoes are known as “Black Smokers”. Here is a picture of how these black smokers work.

In contrast to the approximately 2 °C ambient water temperature at these depths, water emerges from these vents at temperatures ranging from 60 to as high as 464 °C. Thanks to technology scientists discovered that inside these volcanoes there is life. The are some kind of specie that contains a similar DNA to us, the human kind. This discovery is a great advance but it is also scary in a kind of way.