Thermal vents in other oceans have mussels, shrimp, and giant tube worms. But there’s a huge founder effect–each is colonized by the first lucky organisms to find it and survive close to, but not touching, the superheated water that streams out of them. Newly discovered vents in the floor of the Antarctic Ocean have unique ecosystems, with new specie of barnacles, anemones, and snails. One has hairy crabs that eat the bacteria that grow in their hair, along with seven-armed brittle stars that pray on the crabs.
Piles of pale, hairy crabs
The food base for all vents are chemoautotrophic bacteria–meaning they can extract energy from the chemicals in their superheated water. Many of them oxydize molecules of hydrogen sulphide. Because of the pressure, the water can’t boil and is as hot as 380° C or 720° F. These vents are called “black smokers” because precipitating minerals darken the water as it cools.
The crabs are a new species, but not quite unique–other species of hairy crabs have been found at vents in warmer oceans.
An unidentified pale octopus
These deep-sea vents are explored only by remotely operated [submarine] vehicles (ROVs) with lights, video cameras, and sampling arms. The white octopus seemed to be attracted to their light and might not be a vent creature.
- “Yeti crabs and ghost octopus! Unique life around first Antarctic hydrothermal vents” by Stephanie Pappas
- “Hairy crabs and pale octopuses“
- “Antarctic seafloor geyser found“
- PLoS Biology research paper: “The Discovery of New Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vent Communities in the Southern Ocean and Implications for Biogeography“
UPDATE: “There’s a crab in a vent in a hole in the bottom of the sea!”
