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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...s-hotter-boiling-point.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
So how on Earth do you cook THIS? The shrimp that lives in water four times hotter than boiling point
Rimicaris hybisae was found 5,000m beneath the Caribbean sea
By Gavin Allen
Last updated at 6:28 PM on 10th January 2012
Comments (53)
Share
A new species of shrimp has been discovered living deeper than any seen before in the world's most extreme deep sea volcanic vents.
British scientists made the discovery while on an expedition to explore boiling undersea springs - which may be hotter than 450C - on the Caribbean seafloor.
Some 5,000 metres down, in a rift in the seafloor, exists a volcanic spring known as a 'black smoker', which fires a jet of mineral-laden water more than a kilometre into the ocean above.
No little discovery: Rimicaris hybisae, the world's deepest known vent shrimp, was found at a depth of 5,000 metres
No little discovery: Rimicaris hybisae, the world's deepest known vent shrimp, was found at a depth of 5,000 metres
Hot stuff: Thousands of the newly discovered species of shrimp mass around an oceanic geyser beneath the Cayman Islands, in temperatres in excess of 450C
Hot stuff: Thousands of the newly discovered species of shrimp mass around an oceanic geyser beneath the Cayman Islands, in temperatres in excess of 450C
But despite the extreme conditions, the vents are teeming with thousands of a new species of shrimp that has a light-sensing organ on its back.
The pale shrimp congregate in hordes - up to 2,000 shrimp per square metre - around the six-metre tall mineral spires of the vents.
More...
Animals are social networkers too: How creatures’ natural relationships are mirrored by human Facebook and Twitter use
Dose of 'love hormone' that makes monkeys more generous with their juice could help autism treatment for humans
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 researchers have named the shrimp Rimicaris hybisae, after the deep-sea vehicle that they used to collect them.
Water cannon: One of the 'black smoker' vents, 5,000m down on the Caribbean seafloor, belches a jet of mineral-laden water more than a kilometre into the ocean above
Water cannon: One of the 'black smoker' vents, 5,000m down on the Caribbean seafloor, belches a jet of mineral-laden water more than a kilometre into the ocean above
The Cayman shrimp is related to a species called Rimicaris exoculata, found at other deep-sea vents 4,000 kilometres away on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
The team was led by marine geochemist Dr Doug Connelly, of the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, and marine biologist Dr Jon Copley, of the University of Southampton.
During an expedition in April 2010 the scientists used a robot submarine to locate and study the vents at a depth of five kilometres in the Cayman Trough, an undersea trench south of the Cayman Islands.
The vents are gushing hot fluids that are unusually rich in copper, and shooting a jet of mineral-laden water four times higher into the ocean above than other deep-sea vents.
Although the scientists were not able to measure the temperature of the vents directly, these two features indicate that the world's deepest known vents may be hotter than 450C, according to the researchers.
Elsewhere at the Beebe Vent Field, the team saw hundreds of white-tentacled anemones lining cracks where warm water seeps from the sea bed.
Dr Copley said: 'Studying the creatures at these vents, and comparing them with species at other vents around the world will help us to understand how animals disperse and evolve in the deep ocean.'
The researchers also found black smoker vents on the upper slopes of an undersea mountain called Mount Dent which rises nearly three kilometres above the seafloor of the Cayman Trough, but its peak is still more than three kilometres beneath the waves.
Dr Connelly said: 'Finding black smoker vents on Mount Dent was a complete surprise.
'Hot and acidic vents have never been seen in an area like this before, and usually we don't even look for vents in places like this.'
A light in the dark: The vents of Mount Dent are also home to snake-like fish and previously unseen species of snail and a flea-like crustacean called an amphipods
A light in the dark: The vents of Mount Dent are also home to snake-like fish and previously unseen species of snail and a flea-like crustacean called an amphipods
He said: 'Because undersea mountains like Mount Dent may be quite common in the oceans, the discovery suggests that deep-sea vents might be more widespread around the world than previously thought.'
The vents on Mount Dent are also thronged with the new species of shrimp, along with snake-like fish, and previously unseen species of snail and a flea-like crustacean called an amphipod.
Dr Copley said: 'One of the big mysteries of deep-sea vents is how animals are able to disperse from vent field to vent field, crossing the apparently large distances between them.
'But maybe there are more "stepping stones" like these out there than we realised.'
The British expedition that revealed the vents followed a U.S. expedition in November 2009, which detected the plumes of water from deep-sea vents in the Cayman Trough.
A second U.S. expedition is currently using a remotely-operated deep-diving vehicle to investigate the vents further and the British team also plans to return to the Cayman Trough in 2013 with Isis, the National Oceanography Centre's deep-diving remotely operated vehicle, which can work at depths of up to 6,000 metres.
The findings were published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.
http://hk.news.yahoo.com/火山口新種蝦-450...iBnummlumggQRwdANzZWN0aW9ucwR0ZXN0Aw--;_ylv=3
火山口新種蝦 450℃煮不死
-A
+A
明報明報 – 2012年1月12日星期四上午5:45
寄給朋友
列印
【明報專訊】英國科學家在加勒比海發現新品種無眼海蝦（圖），牠們能活於被稱為「黑煙囪」的火山口群附近溫度逾450℃的海水。據潛艇相機拍下的影像顯示，這種海蝦雖無正常眼睛，但背部有感光器官，或靠此辨識火山口附近的微光來移動，並會以每平方米約2000隻的方式密集群居。
是次考察隊於2010年用深海機械潛水艇探測開曼群島（Cayman Islands）南邊海牀的開曼海溝（Cayman Trough），發現多種新物種能存活於海底火山口附近帶有豐富礦物質的高溫水流。除無眼海蝦外，還有一種有白色觸手的海葵、外形像蛇的魚、未知品種的蝸牛和一種像跳蚤的甲殼類動物。是次研究旨在探測海底火山口附近生物，以分析動物如何在深海傳播和進化。
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45943602/ns/technology_and_science-science/
Eyeless shrimp top astounding discoveries at deep sea vents
First details released from first expedition to the sunless, scalding-hot world of volcanic sites
Advertise | AdChoices
University of Southampton / NOC
Swarms of a newly discovered species of shrimp cover a tower at the Beebe hydrothermal vent site, the deepest in the world.
By Andrea Mustain
OurAmazingPlanet
updated
Print
Font:
Scientists announced Tuesday some of the first details from the first expedition to the sunless, scalding-hot world of the deepest volcanic sea vents on Earth.
The researchers unveiled a remarkable list of discoveries: a newfound species of (mostly) eyeless shrimp, evidence that the deepest vent may also be the hottest on the planet, hints that giant slabs of a brilliantly colored mineral popular with Russian czars lie strewn nearby on the seafloor, and the suggestion that these seafloor hot springs are far more common than thought.
The announcement comes nearly two years after researchers aboard the British research vessel James Cook crowded around video monitors and became the first humans to glimpse an extraordinary sight 3 miles (5 kilometers) below them, at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea: slender, rocky spires towering 20 feet (6 meters) above the seafloor, spewing forth a sooty jet of metal-rich fluid some 3,600 feet (1,100 m) high.
"It was a very emotional moment on board — and honestly, there were some tears. It was an overwhelming moment of marvel at our world," said marine biologist Jon Copley, with the University of Southampton in England.
The researchers moved their remote-control vehicle toward the site, known as a black smoker, and a living, wriggling world sprang into view — swarms of shrimp, delicate anemones — "and we were just jubilant, really, and started to explore it further," Copley told OurAmazingPlanet.
University of Southampton / NOC
A black smoker vent at the Beebe Vent Field (also called the Piccard Vent), the deepest in the world, and possibly the hottest.
Unexpected find
The revelations from the expedition, published today in the journal Nature Communications, come at an exciting time. An expedition is at sea this week, aiming to take the first temperature measurements of the deep-sea vents, and take an even wider variety of samples.
Evidence of the sites first surfaced in 2009, when an American-led expedition sniffed out the chemical signature of two hydrothermal vent systems — seafloor chimneys that, fueled by the furious heat of Earth's interior, spew forth a scalding soup of chemically altered seawater — in the Mid-Cayman Rise, a deep gash in the seafloor just south of the Cayman Islands.
It's a site known as a mid-ocean ridge, where two tectonic plates are being wrested apart as fresh seafloor, extruded from the Earth's insides, is shoved between them.
The Mid-Cayman Rise, a rift in the seafloor 70 miles (110 km) long and more than 9 miles (15 km) across, is the deepest mid-ocean ridge on the planet, plunging to nearly 20,000 feet (6,000 m) in places. It's also one of the slowest, widening by just over half an inch (15 mm) per year.
Following the discovery of the vents, Copley and colleague Doug Connelly, a geochemist at the National Oceanography Center in Southampton, led an expedition that was the first to visit and take samples near the two undersea hot springs.
The shallower of the two vents, dubbed the Von Damm, lies 7,500 feet (2,300 m) down, near the summit of an underwater mountain called Mount Dent. The second vent, the world's deepest at 16,400 feet (5,000 meters), is known by two different names, Beebe and Piccard, for William Beebe and Jacques Piccard, both pioneers of deep-sea exploration.
University of Southampton / NOC
Newly identified shrimp species, Rimicaris hybisae.
New life
Although the sites aren't far apart — just about 12 miles (20 km) — the Beebe site is twice as deep, with twice the pressure, yet the team discovered the same species of shrimp living in both places.
The newfound shrimp, dubbed Rimicaris hybisae for HyBIS, the deep-diving vehicle used to fetch them, sport a light-sensing organ on their backs that resembles the angular robot-face logo of the evil Decepticons, the bad guys in the Transformers universe.
It's an appropriate feature for a creature with some remarkable shape-shifting adaptations of its own.
"They do have eyes in their early stages, but then they lose them," Copley said.
More science news from msnbc.com
Image: Image of
IBM Research - Zurich
Hard drive stores a bit with 12 atoms
Twelve atoms are all that's required to store a bit of computer code – a 1 or 0, according to a new discovery that probes the limit of classical data storage.
Complete Civil War sub unveiled for first time
New lemur climbs out of hiding in Madagascar
Birds flying faster than ever due to warming
Based on similar species seen at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Copley said, it appears likely that the shrimp begin life in the deep, but twilit, layers of the ocean, and have typical shrimp eyes, at the end of stalks. "Females move away from vents when brooding," Copley said. "Right by a black smoker probably isn't a good place to breed your embryos."
The young shrimp likely feed on a snow of decomposing material drifting down from the sunlit world above — "so they're feeding on photosynthetic-derived material," Copley said, a contrast from their chemosynthetic diet — one fueled by chemical reactions driven by the Earth's interior heat, instead of the sun — later in life.
As adults, the shrimp return to the vents and undergo a metamorphosis, losing their eyes and developing the light sensor on their backs, which can do little more than tell the 1-inch-long (3-centimeters) creatures if there's a light source nearby. (Although their environment is pitch-black to human eyes, the hot vents emit an infrared glow.)
At their deep-sea homestead, the shrimp feed on gardens of bacteria they cultivate on their own bodies, a strategy also used by yeti crabs recently discovered at hydrothermal vents in the Antarctic.
Super what?
There was one big difference between the two shrimp populations, scientists said. In contrast to the pristine white creatures at the Von Damm site, the shrimp at the Beebe site were a grubby shade of orange, dyed by a fine dusting of rust.
Seawater samples show that the Beebe vent's fluid is extremely rich in metals — among them iron, which explains the rusty shrimp. (When iron oxidizes it turns to rust.)
This hints at an alluring possibility, Connelly said. The vent might provide scientists with one of their first glimpses in the natural world of water in a supercritical-fluid state — water at such extreme high temperatures and under such high pressure that it starts to behave in weird ways.
"The physics of the system behaves quite strangely," Connelly said. It appears that supercritical water can act as a conduit for elements and valuable metals, preferentially stripping them from rocks and ferrying them from inside the Earth, "so there may be enriched mineral deposits around these sites," he said.
This type of natural strip-mining likely occurs deep inside other hydrothermal vent sites, but, once the fluid rises to a depth where the pressure diminishes, stops before the fluids come blasting out through the seafloor.
"Here we may be seeing that (fluid) getting right to the surface," Connelly said.
Regal signposts
The Beebe/Piccard site is about 3,000 feet (900 m) deeper than any vent ever discovered. At such depth, it could be that the pressure is so intense that the water retains its weird, mineral-mining properties in a place where — with great difficulty — humans can watch.
University of Southampton / NOC
Anemones living in the island of warmth around the Beebe vent.
It could be "a window to what normally happens in the deeper sub-seafloor," Connelly said.
Another tantalizing indication that the Beebe site could be just such a window, Connelly said, came when the camera spied an unmistakable hue on the seafloor nearby — the bright, lustrous green of malachite, a precious mineral strewn generously about royal residences from Versailles to St. Petersburg in forms as various as tables, urns and columns.
Although he said that colors in the deep sea can be deceptive, and he has no way of knowing for sure until the substance is sampled, "to see that color green — it was very tantalizing."
"We saw sheets of it on the seabed, which was amazing," Connelly said. "It's a very distinctive color, so the geologists got very excited, but we couldn't grab a piece," he said. "No doubt our colleagues out there will find a piece," he added.
Big answers, new questions
Both Connelly and Copley said that, although it's not as deep, the Von Damm vent was almost the bigger surprise. The discovery of the site, perched on a mountaintop several miles away from the Mid-Cayman Rise's main volcanic activity, was a shock, and one with big implications.
"There may be a lot of vents out there that we've missed," Copley said. From a biological standpoint, he said, this could mean there are a lot more stepping stones flung around the world's oceans that might allow species to leapfrog from one hydrothermal vent site to the next.
A 2010 NOAA expedition found tube worms at the Von Damm site, a first for a hydrothermal vent site in the Atlantic, and yet another sign that animals travel among vent sites in mysterious ways.
Connelly agreed, and said that, although the expedition was immensely informative, it also raised a lot of very big questions. Some, such as the temperature of both the vents, will likely be answered in the coming days. Others will require years of research and further exploration.
University of Southampton / NOC
The newfound shrimp swarm a vent at the Von Damm vent site, alongside a pale, snake-like fish. The team also found a new species of snail and a new species of amphipod, a tiny crustacean, at this site.
For him, Connelly said, being able to look but not touch much of the unexplored world he saw unfold before him in 2010 was exhilarating.
"It was frustrating as well — only ever getting to half the answer you want to," he said.
"But that's what makes science great, isn't it? There are still questions to answer."
Reach Andrea Mustain at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @AndreaMustain. Follow OurAmazingPlanet for the latest in Earth science and exploration news on Twitter @OAPlanet and on Facebook.
In Photos: Spooky Deep-Sea Creatures
Gallery: Amazing Creatures from the Census of Marine Life
Earth's Final Frontier: Mysteries of the Deep Sea
© 2012 OurAmazingPlanet. All rights reserved. More from OurAmazingPlanet.
So how on Earth do you cook THIS? The shrimp that lives in water four times hotter than boiling point
Rimicaris hybisae was found 5,000m beneath the Caribbean sea
By Gavin Allen
Last updated at 6:28 PM on 10th January 2012
Comments (53)
Share
A new species of shrimp has been discovered living deeper than any seen before in the world's most extreme deep sea volcanic vents.
British scientists made the discovery while on an expedition to explore boiling undersea springs - which may be hotter than 450C - on the Caribbean seafloor.
Some 5,000 metres down, in a rift in the seafloor, exists a volcanic spring known as a 'black smoker', which fires a jet of mineral-laden water more than a kilometre into the ocean above.
No little discovery: Rimicaris hybisae, the world's deepest known vent shrimp, was found at a depth of 5,000 metres
No little discovery: Rimicaris hybisae, the world's deepest known vent shrimp, was found at a depth of 5,000 metres
Hot stuff: Thousands of the newly discovered species of shrimp mass around an oceanic geyser beneath the Cayman Islands, in temperatres in excess of 450C
Hot stuff: Thousands of the newly discovered species of shrimp mass around an oceanic geyser beneath the Cayman Islands, in temperatres in excess of 450C
But despite the extreme conditions, the vents are teeming with thousands of a new species of shrimp that has a light-sensing organ on its back.
The pale shrimp congregate in hordes - up to 2,000 shrimp per square metre - around the six-metre tall mineral spires of the vents.
More...
Animals are social networkers too: How creatures’ natural relationships are mirrored by human Facebook and Twitter use
Dose of 'love hormone' that makes monkeys more generous with their juice could help autism treatment for humans
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 researchers have named the shrimp Rimicaris hybisae, after the deep-sea vehicle that they used to collect them.
Water cannon: One of the 'black smoker' vents, 5,000m down on the Caribbean seafloor, belches a jet of mineral-laden water more than a kilometre into the ocean above
Water cannon: One of the 'black smoker' vents, 5,000m down on the Caribbean seafloor, belches a jet of mineral-laden water more than a kilometre into the ocean above
The Cayman shrimp is related to a species called Rimicaris exoculata, found at other deep-sea vents 4,000 kilometres away on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
The team was led by marine geochemist Dr Doug Connelly, of the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, and marine biologist Dr Jon Copley, of the University of Southampton.
During an expedition in April 2010 the scientists used a robot submarine to locate and study the vents at a depth of five kilometres in the Cayman Trough, an undersea trench south of the Cayman Islands.
The vents are gushing hot fluids that are unusually rich in copper, and shooting a jet of mineral-laden water four times higher into the ocean above than other deep-sea vents.
Although the scientists were not able to measure the temperature of the vents directly, these two features indicate that the world's deepest known vents may be hotter than 450C, according to the researchers.
Elsewhere at the Beebe Vent Field, the team saw hundreds of white-tentacled anemones lining cracks where warm water seeps from the sea bed.
Dr Copley said: 'Studying the creatures at these vents, and comparing them with species at other vents around the world will help us to understand how animals disperse and evolve in the deep ocean.'
The researchers also found black smoker vents on the upper slopes of an undersea mountain called Mount Dent which rises nearly three kilometres above the seafloor of the Cayman Trough, but its peak is still more than three kilometres beneath the waves.
Dr Connelly said: 'Finding black smoker vents on Mount Dent was a complete surprise.
'Hot and acidic vents have never been seen in an area like this before, and usually we don't even look for vents in places like this.'
A light in the dark: The vents of Mount Dent are also home to snake-like fish and previously unseen species of snail and a flea-like crustacean called an amphipods
A light in the dark: The vents of Mount Dent are also home to snake-like fish and previously unseen species of snail and a flea-like crustacean called an amphipods
He said: 'Because undersea mountains like Mount Dent may be quite common in the oceans, the discovery suggests that deep-sea vents might be more widespread around the world than previously thought.'
The vents on Mount Dent are also thronged with the new species of shrimp, along with snake-like fish, and previously unseen species of snail and a flea-like crustacean called an amphipod.
Dr Copley said: 'One of the big mysteries of deep-sea vents is how animals are able to disperse from vent field to vent field, crossing the apparently large distances between them.
'But maybe there are more "stepping stones" like these out there than we realised.'
The British expedition that revealed the vents followed a U.S. expedition in November 2009, which detected the plumes of water from deep-sea vents in the Cayman Trough.
A second U.S. expedition is currently using a remotely-operated deep-diving vehicle to investigate the vents further and the British team also plans to return to the Cayman Trough in 2013 with Isis, the National Oceanography Centre's deep-diving remotely operated vehicle, which can work at depths of up to 6,000 metres.
The findings were published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.
http://hk.news.yahoo.com/火山口新種蝦-450...iBnummlumggQRwdANzZWN0aW9ucwR0ZXN0Aw--;_ylv=3
火山口新種蝦 450℃煮不死
-A
+A
明報明報 – 2012年1月12日星期四上午5:45
寄給朋友
列印
【明報專訊】英國科學家在加勒比海發現新品種無眼海蝦（圖），牠們能活於被稱為「黑煙囪」的火山口群附近溫度逾450℃的海水。據潛艇相機拍下的影像顯示，這種海蝦雖無正常眼睛，但背部有感光器官，或靠此辨識火山口附近的微光來移動，並會以每平方米約2000隻的方式密集群居。
是次考察隊於2010年用深海機械潛水艇探測開曼群島（Cayman Islands）南邊海牀的開曼海溝（Cayman Trough），發現多種新物種能存活於海底火山口附近帶有豐富礦物質的高溫水流。除無眼海蝦外，還有一種有白色觸手的海葵、外形像蛇的魚、未知品種的蝸牛和一種像跳蚤的甲殼類動物。是次研究旨在探測海底火山口附近生物，以分析動物如何在深海傳播和進化。
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45943602/ns/technology_and_science-science/
Eyeless shrimp top astounding discoveries at deep sea vents
First details released from first expedition to the sunless, scalding-hot world of volcanic sites
Advertise | AdChoices
University of Southampton / NOC
Swarms of a newly discovered species of shrimp cover a tower at the Beebe hydrothermal vent site, the deepest in the world.
By Andrea Mustain
OurAmazingPlanet
updated
Font:
Scientists announced Tuesday some of the first details from the first expedition to the sunless, scalding-hot world of the deepest volcanic sea vents on Earth.
The researchers unveiled a remarkable list of discoveries: a newfound species of (mostly) eyeless shrimp, evidence that the deepest vent may also be the hottest on the planet, hints that giant slabs of a brilliantly colored mineral popular with Russian czars lie strewn nearby on the seafloor, and the suggestion that these seafloor hot springs are far more common than thought.
The announcement comes nearly two years after researchers aboard the British research vessel James Cook crowded around video monitors and became the first humans to glimpse an extraordinary sight 3 miles (5 kilometers) below them, at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea: slender, rocky spires towering 20 feet (6 meters) above the seafloor, spewing forth a sooty jet of metal-rich fluid some 3,600 feet (1,100 m) high.
"It was a very emotional moment on board — and honestly, there were some tears. It was an overwhelming moment of marvel at our world," said marine biologist Jon Copley, with the University of Southampton in England.
The researchers moved their remote-control vehicle toward the site, known as a black smoker, and a living, wriggling world sprang into view — swarms of shrimp, delicate anemones — "and we were just jubilant, really, and started to explore it further," Copley told OurAmazingPlanet.
University of Southampton / NOC
A black smoker vent at the Beebe Vent Field (also called the Piccard Vent), the deepest in the world, and possibly the hottest.
Unexpected find
The revelations from the expedition, published today in the journal Nature Communications, come at an exciting time. An expedition is at sea this week, aiming to take the first temperature measurements of the deep-sea vents, and take an even wider variety of samples.
Evidence of the sites first surfaced in 2009, when an American-led expedition sniffed out the chemical signature of two hydrothermal vent systems — seafloor chimneys that, fueled by the furious heat of Earth's interior, spew forth a scalding soup of chemically altered seawater — in the Mid-Cayman Rise, a deep gash in the seafloor just south of the Cayman Islands.
It's a site known as a mid-ocean ridge, where two tectonic plates are being wrested apart as fresh seafloor, extruded from the Earth's insides, is shoved between them.
The Mid-Cayman Rise, a rift in the seafloor 70 miles (110 km) long and more than 9 miles (15 km) across, is the deepest mid-ocean ridge on the planet, plunging to nearly 20,000 feet (6,000 m) in places. It's also one of the slowest, widening by just over half an inch (15 mm) per year.
Following the discovery of the vents, Copley and colleague Doug Connelly, a geochemist at the National Oceanography Center in Southampton, led an expedition that was the first to visit and take samples near the two undersea hot springs.
The shallower of the two vents, dubbed the Von Damm, lies 7,500 feet (2,300 m) down, near the summit of an underwater mountain called Mount Dent. The second vent, the world's deepest at 16,400 feet (5,000 meters), is known by two different names, Beebe and Piccard, for William Beebe and Jacques Piccard, both pioneers of deep-sea exploration.
University of Southampton / NOC
Newly identified shrimp species, Rimicaris hybisae.
New life
Although the sites aren't far apart — just about 12 miles (20 km) — the Beebe site is twice as deep, with twice the pressure, yet the team discovered the same species of shrimp living in both places.
The newfound shrimp, dubbed Rimicaris hybisae for HyBIS, the deep-diving vehicle used to fetch them, sport a light-sensing organ on their backs that resembles the angular robot-face logo of the evil Decepticons, the bad guys in the Transformers universe.
It's an appropriate feature for a creature with some remarkable shape-shifting adaptations of its own.
"They do have eyes in their early stages, but then they lose them," Copley said.
More science news from msnbc.com
Image: Image of
IBM Research - Zurich
Hard drive stores a bit with 12 atoms
Twelve atoms are all that's required to store a bit of computer code – a 1 or 0, according to a new discovery that probes the limit of classical data storage.
Complete Civil War sub unveiled for first time
New lemur climbs out of hiding in Madagascar
Birds flying faster than ever due to warming
Based on similar species seen at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Copley said, it appears likely that the shrimp begin life in the deep, but twilit, layers of the ocean, and have typical shrimp eyes, at the end of stalks. "Females move away from vents when brooding," Copley said. "Right by a black smoker probably isn't a good place to breed your embryos."
The young shrimp likely feed on a snow of decomposing material drifting down from the sunlit world above — "so they're feeding on photosynthetic-derived material," Copley said, a contrast from their chemosynthetic diet — one fueled by chemical reactions driven by the Earth's interior heat, instead of the sun — later in life.
As adults, the shrimp return to the vents and undergo a metamorphosis, losing their eyes and developing the light sensor on their backs, which can do little more than tell the 1-inch-long (3-centimeters) creatures if there's a light source nearby. (Although their environment is pitch-black to human eyes, the hot vents emit an infrared glow.)
At their deep-sea homestead, the shrimp feed on gardens of bacteria they cultivate on their own bodies, a strategy also used by yeti crabs recently discovered at hydrothermal vents in the Antarctic.
Super what?
There was one big difference between the two shrimp populations, scientists said. In contrast to the pristine white creatures at the Von Damm site, the shrimp at the Beebe site were a grubby shade of orange, dyed by a fine dusting of rust.
Seawater samples show that the Beebe vent's fluid is extremely rich in metals — among them iron, which explains the rusty shrimp. (When iron oxidizes it turns to rust.)
This hints at an alluring possibility, Connelly said. The vent might provide scientists with one of their first glimpses in the natural world of water in a supercritical-fluid state — water at such extreme high temperatures and under such high pressure that it starts to behave in weird ways.
"The physics of the system behaves quite strangely," Connelly said. It appears that supercritical water can act as a conduit for elements and valuable metals, preferentially stripping them from rocks and ferrying them from inside the Earth, "so there may be enriched mineral deposits around these sites," he said.
This type of natural strip-mining likely occurs deep inside other hydrothermal vent sites, but, once the fluid rises to a depth where the pressure diminishes, stops before the fluids come blasting out through the seafloor.
"Here we may be seeing that (fluid) getting right to the surface," Connelly said.
Regal signposts
The Beebe/Piccard site is about 3,000 feet (900 m) deeper than any vent ever discovered. At such depth, it could be that the pressure is so intense that the water retains its weird, mineral-mining properties in a place where — with great difficulty — humans can watch.
University of Southampton / NOC
Anemones living in the island of warmth around the Beebe vent.
It could be "a window to what normally happens in the deeper sub-seafloor," Connelly said.
Another tantalizing indication that the Beebe site could be just such a window, Connelly said, came when the camera spied an unmistakable hue on the seafloor nearby — the bright, lustrous green of malachite, a precious mineral strewn generously about royal residences from Versailles to St. Petersburg in forms as various as tables, urns and columns.
Although he said that colors in the deep sea can be deceptive, and he has no way of knowing for sure until the substance is sampled, "to see that color green — it was very tantalizing."
"We saw sheets of it on the seabed, which was amazing," Connelly said. "It's a very distinctive color, so the geologists got very excited, but we couldn't grab a piece," he said. "No doubt our colleagues out there will find a piece," he added.
Big answers, new questions
Both Connelly and Copley said that, although it's not as deep, the Von Damm vent was almost the bigger surprise. The discovery of the site, perched on a mountaintop several miles away from the Mid-Cayman Rise's main volcanic activity, was a shock, and one with big implications.
"There may be a lot of vents out there that we've missed," Copley said. From a biological standpoint, he said, this could mean there are a lot more stepping stones flung around the world's oceans that might allow species to leapfrog from one hydrothermal vent site to the next.
A 2010 NOAA expedition found tube worms at the Von Damm site, a first for a hydrothermal vent site in the Atlantic, and yet another sign that animals travel among vent sites in mysterious ways.
Connelly agreed, and said that, although the expedition was immensely informative, it also raised a lot of very big questions. Some, such as the temperature of both the vents, will likely be answered in the coming days. Others will require years of research and further exploration.
University of Southampton / NOC
The newfound shrimp swarm a vent at the Von Damm vent site, alongside a pale, snake-like fish. The team also found a new species of snail and a new species of amphipod, a tiny crustacean, at this site.
For him, Connelly said, being able to look but not touch much of the unexplored world he saw unfold before him in 2010 was exhilarating.
"It was frustrating as well — only ever getting to half the answer you want to," he said.
"But that's what makes science great, isn't it? There are still questions to answer."
Reach Andrea Mustain at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @AndreaMustain. Follow OurAmazingPlanet for the latest in Earth science and exploration news on Twitter @OAPlanet and on Facebook.
In Photos: Spooky Deep-Sea Creatures
Gallery: Amazing Creatures from the Census of Marine Life
Earth's Final Frontier: Mysteries of the Deep Sea
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