Three miles below the surface, a deep-sea robot discovered a hostile habitat where water temperatures reach more than 400°C without boiling but organisms can still survive
Thousands of metres deep in the Caribbean Sea, there’s a bizarre habitat where there’s no sunlight, mineral-rich waters reach 401 degrees Celsius (but doesn’t boil) and only a unique array of organisms can survive.
What is the Beebe Vent Field?
Known as the Beebe Vent Field, and located 4,968 metres deep in the Cayman Trough, these are the deepest known hydrothermal vents on the planet. They were discovered by a deep-sea robot (called a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV) while researchers were studying the Cayman Trough, an underwater trench off the coast of the Cayman Islands.
- Underwater robot embarks on "historic mission" to circumnavigate globe. What it finds could be crucial
- When scientists sunk a deep-sea robot 1,300 metres into the Pacific Ocean they found something staggering...
- Underwater robot stumbles across thousands of sharks asleep on the seabed. Watch the incredible, gob-smacking footage here
Hydrothermal vents typically occur on areas of the seafloor where tectonic plates are separating. When the seawater meets the magma below, it is ‘superheated’ and rises back out at an extremely high temperature, bringing gases and minerals with it. Yet, despite the staggering temperature, the high pressure prevents the water from boiling.
There are two types of vent known as white smokers and black smokers. White smokers are usually cooler and look pale because of the silica and barite they can transport with them. “Black smokers are hotter and spew out a fluid that carries mostly iron sulphides, which make them look darker,” explains the London Natural History Museum (NHM) on its website.
The Beebe Vent Field has extremely hot black smokers that look like rows of factory chimneys spewing out dark smoke.
Most animals would not be able to survive in these extreme conditions. Yet, the vents are brimming with life. “While these fluids are hot, they tend to cool very quickly as they mix with seawater,” adds NHM researcher Maggie Georgieva. “The vent might be very hot, but when you move away from it a little, you can have a temperature of 20°C or so, which is quite nice for lots of animals.”
When deep-sea researchers explored the vents using their ROV, they found a type of fish called eelpouts (zoarcid fish), anemones, squat lobsters and colonies of shrimp. These strange shrimp have a special light-sensing organ on their backs. “Lacking normal eyes, the shrimp instead have a light-sensing organ on their backs, which may help them to navigate in the faint glow of deep-sea vents,” the University of Southampton explains on its website.
All this life is possible because deep-sea animals have adapted to survive.
Here, where it’s far too deep for sunlight to reach, organisms have to get their energy another way. So, bacteria convert chemicals from the vent into food through a process called chemosynthesis (in a similar way that creatures in shallower waters turn light into energy through photosynthesis). This then provides energy that can be passed up the food chain as deep-sea creatures eat each other.
- Deep-sea submersible discovers 'giant' animal 5,922m down in Pacific abyss
- What the deep-sea robots saw when they went to the darkest depths of our oceans
- Humans descend into huge deep-sea canyon for first time ever. What they find is astounding
Top image: Profuse venting at the Beebe Vent Field, approximately 5000m below the surface. Extremely high temperatures (nearly 400 degrees Celsius) mean that many metals are present in the plume, which gives it a distinctive black-smoker appearance. Credit: Wünderbrot, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
