WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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The earth cracks open.  Fluid and minerals spew from the seafloor.  Water shimmers.

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Life abounds. We're looking at
hydrothermal vents, originally discovered

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near the Galapagos rift in 1977.
Basically, a hydrothermal vent is a hot

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spring produced by underwater volcanoes
or tectonic activity, but what's really

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cool about them is the abundance and
assortment of life that exists there.

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It's not life like we're used to up here
on the surface.  It's adapted to the dark

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conditions of the deep ocean.  Organisms
that live around hydrothermal vents

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don't rely on sunlight and
photosynthesis.  Instead, bacteria and

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archaea use a process called
chemosynthesis to convert minerals and

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other chemicals in the water into energy.
This bacterium is the base of the vent

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community food-web and supports hundreds of species of animals.  What kinds of animals?

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Well scientists on the NOAA ship,
Okeanos Explorer, went to the rift in

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2011, and here's just some of what they
saw.  Riftia tubeworms, also called

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giant tubeworms, which can grow to their
full size of almost 5 feet long in less

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than two years, bathymodiolus, deep-sea
mussels, which are often the first

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creatures to colonize the vent and are
able to survive for a short time after

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the vent is inactive.  Serpulidae, or
feather-duster worms,  and Tevnia tubeworms,

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which are often the food of choice
for vent-crabs; the top predator of the

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vent community.  But it's not all animals
down there.  Researchers also saw white

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flocculent material erupting from the
vents like a snow blower.  An indicator of

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microbial life beneath the seafloor.  And,
of course, there were fresh lava flows

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which means the seafloor is continuing
to change, and that change means there's

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always more to learn.