Photos: Volcanic Vents, Crawling With Creatures, Found in Mexico Sea

Black Smoke Rising
Image courtesy MBARI
Smoke-like columns of mineral-rich water rise from a hydrothermal vent—one of ten active volcanic vents recently discovered in the Gulf of California (map), the long, narrow body of water between Baja California and mainland Mexico.
The vents are the first to be found in the region despite many years of searching. Scientists had suspected active vents existed in the gulf, due to the region's volcanic activity, but until now they'd been hard to track down. (Watch video: What are hydrothermal vents?)
The new "black smokers" were found using sonar-equipped robotic submarines, which were deployed during the last leg of a three-month expedition by California's Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI). The team has been using sonar vehicles to successfully locate new vents in the northeastern Pacific since 2006.
(Related: "Major Deep-Sea Smokers Found-'Evolution in Overdrive.'")
On the latest excursion, sonar maps of the seafloor revealed the tell-tale structures of vent chimneys, showing the team just where to send its remotely operated vehicles (ROVs).
"The way that people found hydrothermal vents in the past was by studying the water column and looking for temperature or turbidity anomalies and hoping to see something close by," said MBARI senior scientist David Clague.
"It was basically driving around in the dark and hoping you fell into it."
—Ker Than
Published May 23, 2012
Crabby Company
Image courtesy MBARI
Near one of the newfound hydrothermal vents, a gang of galatheid crabs clambers across an old sulfide mound, once home to a tube worm community. "All the little round holes were clusters of tube worms that died as the mound became inactive," MBARI's Clague explained.
(Related pictures: "New Squat Lobsters Found Off Australia.")
Hydrothermal vents are regions where cool seawater seeps down through cracks in the seafloor and gets warmed by hot magma beneath Earth's crust. As the water heats up, it becomes buoyant. The mineral-enriched water rises back toward the surface, where it spews geyser-like out of vents in the seafloor.
Active vents can heat the surrounding water in the otherwise chilly deep ocean to more than 600 degrees Fahrenheit (350 degrees Celsius).
Some organisms, such as tube worms, use symbiotic bacteria to feed on chemicals that seep up from cracks around the vents. These creatures help form the foundations for larger communities of marine organisms not found in any other ocean ecosystem.
Published May 23, 2012
3-D Coral
Image courtesy MBARI
A pale galatheid crab hangs on the branches of a white coral growing on a dead vent chimney near one of the newfound hydrothermal vents.
At 2.5 to 3 feet (0.7 to 1 meter) tall, the white corals found in the Gulf of California are unusually large, Clague said. "They were the biggest ones that any of us had ever seen."
(Related pictures: "'Supergiant' Shrimp-Like Beasts Found in Deep Sea.")
In addition to being big, white corals in the region had peculiar shapes. "Usually with this genus, all the branches are aligned in a single plane," Clague said.
"But because these had grown so huge, they actually had multiple branches that were in different planes. So they were very three-dimensional."
Published May 23, 2012
Hungry Sponge
Image courtesy MBARI
Popping out to feed on plankton and bacteria, a glass sponge peeks out from a folded section of solidified lava during the expedition. (More deep-sea pictures: Chimaera, ten-armed starfish found off Indonesia.)
The newly discovered hydrothermal vents were all found within an active volcanic region known as Alarcón Rise, close to the mouth of the Gulf of California.
The underwater volcanoes—which are about 7,700 feet (2,350 meters) underwater—are active, but "the eruptions that are this deep really pose no danger to anything on land," Clague said.
Published May 23, 2012
Sooty Chimney
Image courtesy MBARI
Black "smoke" funnels from a golf ball-size opening in an underwater chimney, part of the newly discovered hydrothermal field in the Gulf of California.
"You can see a large region of hazier smoke behind it," MBARI's Clague said. "That's from a vent that's farther down, on the backside of the chimney."
(Related pictures: "Giant Undersea Volcano Revealed.")
Published May 23, 2012
Go, Go Gadget
Image courtesy MBARI
The mechanical manipulator arm of the ROV Doc Ricketts collects samples from the relatively thin outer shell of a "pillow" lava formation—so named for its round shape—that had drained before fully solidifying.
"To me, these are little gold mines, because I can sample them" to determine the lava's composition, Clague said.
(Also see "Robots of the Gulf Spill: Fishlike Subs, Smart Torpedoes.")
Published May 23, 2012
Robot Recovery
Photograph courtesy Andrew McKee, MBARI
The ROV Doc Rickets—one of the robotic subs used to discover the hydrothermal vents in the Gulf of California—is hoisted into the belly of the MBARI research ship after a morning dive.
(Related pictures: "Deepest Ocean Vents Swarm With Heat-Vision Shrimp?")
Published May 23, 2012
Worm Pile
Image courtesy MBARI
A tube worm community grows on top of a lava mound near an active hydrothermal vent in the Gulf of California. The biggest worms in this picture are about 5 feet (1.5 meters) long.
"This worm has no gut," Clague said. Instead, "it has bacteria in its tissue that can convert the hydrogen sulfide [leaking from the seafloor] to sulfate." This releases energy, which is food for the worm.
"It's a completely symbiotic relationship."
(Also see "Six-Hundred-Year-Old Worms Among Surprises of Ten-Year Sea Survey.")
Published May 23, 2012
All Together Now
Image courtesy MBARI
Small fish peer out from a mass of tube worm gills near one of the newfound vents. The black spots covering the worm casings are marine mollusks called limpets.
"This fish is specific to the vent communities, and they can grow up to 10 inches [25 centimeters] long," Clague said.
"They have a habit of living in the empty tubes after a tube worm dies. They back into them, and that's their habitat."
(Related pictures: "New Deep-Sea Worms Found-Have Big 'Lips.'")
Published May 23, 2012
Volcanic Gates
Image courtesy MBARI
Resembling the ruins of a submerged building, this solid lava that arch still stands despite being shaken by occasional underwater earthquakes. (Also see "Mexico Earthquake Zone Linked to California Faults.")
Such odd formations are "wonderful things," Clague said. "I've probably seen 5,000 of them, and they never lose their charm."
Published May 23, 2012
Next: "Lost World" of Odd Species
Photograph courtesy NERC CHESSO Consortium
Published May 23, 2012