See Deap-Sea (Hydrothermal) Vents

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Deep Sea Vents, also known as Hydrothermal Vents, are the only inhabitants of the Seven Wonders of the Undersea World list that exist in multiple places. Yet, since they emanate from as deep as 8,000 feet or more below the surface of the ocean they are only observable underwater with a submarine. They are created by volcanic and tectonic activity in areas where huge hostile plates are converging or spreading apart. Magma erupts along the margins of these plates, sometimes with such ferocity that it creates instant lava lakes. Under unimaginable pressure sea water gradually seeps into the vents where it is superheated and filled with minerals before it is eventually returned to the ocean. This discovery has led some scientists to speculate that each drop of sea water circulates through the earth’s crust, through the vents, every 10 to 20 million years. Before the discovery of the vents, most scientists thought that all of the minerals in the sea were dropped into the ocean by continental rivers. Many of the chemicals the Deep Sea Vents produce provide basic marine life with nutrition and in turn animals up the food chain receive better quality food. The living residents of the vent community are among the most fascinating of all the world’s underwater wonders from a scientific perspective, if not among the prettiest. Marine biologists study a food chain that functions without sunlight amid the Deep Sea Vents. Most biologists had once believed that only sunlight, through photosynthesis, could support life on our planet. At the vents, however, life begins with bacteria that become food for the other animals in the vent community. Gigantism is a product of the Hydrothermal Vents. Among the hundreds of unique species of life found near the vents are found giant red-tipped tube worms,12 foot long creatures whose 300,000 tentacles strain food from the water. In shallower waters these worms are common, growing to about the size of a human hand. Blind crabs and shrimp, which don’t need to see in a lightless world, live among octopuses that eat crabs and mussels. Other fascinating residents include pink ventfish, sea cucumbers, sponges and brittle stars, flowerlike animals that use their fine appendages to anchor themselves to rocks. Mussels are among the 48 documented species of mollusks found in vent communities along with some species of giant clams. Several of these vents have been found and explored in both the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans, while others likely remain hidden a mile or more below the sea surface and await discovery. The existence of Hydrothermal Vents was unknown to scientists until super-heated water in the Red Sea was noticed in 1949. In 1979 a paper was published about Deep Sea Vent life forms as the result of exploration vents along the Galapagos Rift deep in the Pacific Ocean.

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