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A garden of benthic delights
Natural History, Feb, 2004 by Erin Espelie
An underwater rumble strip of volcanic vents, continually repaved with flesh magma, win& around the Earth for some 40,000 miles, creating a rough roadway along the boundaries of the planet-wide system of oceanic plates. Among the vents, collectively known as the mid-ocean ridge, move strange assortments of benthic wayfarers. Two of them, the vent crab (Bythograea thermydron) and the giant tubeworm (Riftia pachyptila), are pictured here on the Pacific Ocean floor. Larvae of both the crab and the tubeworm can hitch rides--not entirely passively, some marine biologists say--on currents while traveling between hot spots.
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For film director Stephen Low and his colleagues, visiting such a hot spot a hundred-plus miles off the coast of Mexico took more than hitching a ride. After a two-hour descent in a two-man submarine, with a pilot whose priority was to keep the sub from getting cooked, Low assembled his camera and turned on 4,400 watts of exterior lighting. Apparently the deep-sea creatures didn't bat an eye--even the ones that had eyes.
At the nutrient base of this hardy ecosystem live chemical-converting bacteria--some of which the giant tubeworms have adopted. Hydrogen sulfide diffuses across the tubeworms' crimson "lips" and is conveyed by hemoglobin in the worms' blood to the resident microbial colonies. For their part, the symbiotic bacteria--whose genome is just now being sequenced--churn out carbohydrates that keep the worms puckering up for more.
An accomplished diver who has visited dozens of wrecks, IMAX filmmaker STEPHEN LOW ("The Natural Moment," page 6) has directed the superlarge-format movies in the air (Skyward), on land (Super Speedway), and under the sea (Titanica and his most recent IMAX film, Volcanoes of the Deep Sea). Low captured tube worms and scavenging crabs on film recently while on location for Volcanoes.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Natural History Magazine, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
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