NOVA Online | Into the Abyss | Life in the Abyss
NOVA Online | Into the Abyss | Life in the Abyss
by Peter Tyson
PBS.org
Living at Extremes
If there is a harsher place to live than a hydrothermal vent, it hasn't been found yet. Pitch darkness, poison gas, heavy metals, extreme acidity, enormous pressure, water at turns frigid and searing—this seafloor environment seems more like something from deep space than from our own deep sea.
Yet amazing communities of life exist at hydrothermal vents and the so-called "black smoker" chimneys that, given the right conditions, rise above them like erupting stalagmites. Blind shrimp, giant white crabs, and a variety of tubeworms are just some of the more than 300 species of vent life that biologists have identified since scientists first blundered upon this otherworldly community two decades ago. More than 95 percent of these species are new to science.
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