Part Two

Unfortunately I am unable to show you a black smoker in today's blog. If I were one of those crummy, backhanded journalists who gain the faith of the person that they interview and then go ahead and publish information that was agreed to be kept private . . . if I WERE one of those types you would be seeing those smokers right now. But I have to respect my source's confidentiality, and therefore I can only describe them to you.




They are bizarre, fantastic, surreal . . . keep on going, fill in the adjective, but what remains is that they are a wonder of the world. Very rarely seen because of their relative proximity to oxygen-breathing hominids, it is another example of how technology continues to amaze by bringing us views into worlds within our own world.




Hydrothermal activity was first discovered in 1977 at the Galapagos spreading center, and since then, although this geologic and oceanic process has been discovered elsewhere, no scientists have been able to discover actual black smokers at this original location.

Hydrothermal vents occur when water is sinking into rock formations that are somewhat permeable. This causes a mixture of minerals, the seawater with what is within the rocks. Combine this with the convection of the hot magma below the surface of the crust and PRESTO! You have yourself some hydrothermal activity, which means you also have black smokers.




Luckily for those aboard the TGT, one of the areas where this occurs, where magma forms on the ocean crust because of two tectonic plates pulling apart is near the Galapagos Islands. Think R & R when the mission is over! Like snorkeling!




Now to find this hydrothermal activity, these black smokers is the ultimate goal of the crew. However, this process of fire and earth and water creates chemosynthetic life. This unique pluming of particulate matter, heated by the belly of the earth, has been proven to produce different types of life heretofore unknown. Examples are these funky looking huge tubeworms. Other beings observed are deep sea fish, very dwarfed with a slow metabolism that allows them to exist under such deep pressure conditions. Also mini-crablike creatures have been spotted.




Evidently the tubeworms and other life forms feed off chemosynthetic bacteria that collect from the hydrothermal blasts. "What was really weird about this trip was that when the biologists aboard had gone to other spreading centers they always found these huge biological communities, mussels, and clams and anemones and crabs, and they know these life forms must be getting to a black smoker. Therefore our researchers aboard who had previously studied this spreading center hydrothermal activity always revealed a biological community that is dependent on the vents to exist. This time we found the vents, named the Iguanas on December 14th, we found the black smokers, but almost no life. There was only one little batch of tubeworms. Even at other black smokers we found nearby, it was odd that we did not find a bustling biological community there that had been associated with ones in the past."

Odd shaped Rat-tail fish and other little species of eels can be seen on seldom occasions. Each life form seems to be elongated and shrunken in order to survive in such conditions. I think about these little guys down there and I stop bitching about my clogged up ear from surfing too much.

ER Harris

Part 3 On the way!

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