Giant worms found wriggling under the Pacific seabed have unveiled a thriving ecosystem in a fiercely hostile environment, according to a study published by Nature Communications.
The team found the booming community 2,515 meters (8,250 feet) below the surface just off the coast of central America.
An underwater oasis has been created under a chain of mountains that run from north-to-south in the Pacific. In this part of the chain, two tectonic plates are moving away from each other, opening up hydrothermal vents that let out water heated by magma and loaded with chemical compounds.
The seabed zone was first discovered in the 1970s. But the latest research found tube worms and mollusks that thrive despite water pressure 250 times greater than at the surface and the total darkness.
The inhabitants of the animal Atlantis live off the nutrients produced by bacteria on the seabed.
Scientists are now trying to understand how the tube worm larvae get around so quickly to colonize new areas around the vents created after each underwater eruption.
Underwater zoo
One theory is that the larvae get under the crust with cold deep-sea water where it mixes with the hotter water created by earthquakes and eruptions and “and then they get spilled out at the surface and settle”, said Monika Bright, a marine biology professor at the University of Vienna and co-author of the Nature Communications study.
