Deep Sea Hydrothermal Vents - Discovering Life Without Sunlight

7,000 feet below the surface of the Northeast Pacific exists a strange world without sun, an alien landscape rarely seen by man. Superheated water packed with a rich cocktail of minerals and microbes spews from hydrothermal vents. A diverse and eccentric group of animals congregate at these volcanic springs because of an enormous food supply based on bacterial life. Today, we'll travel almost 200 miles southwest of Vancouver Island to explore the Endeavour Deep Sea Hot Bents of the Juan de Fuca Ridge. We'll join a scientific expedition conducting biological and geological research in this dynamic ecosystem. We'll examine Canadian efforts to conserve the Endeavour Hot Bents as a pilot marine protected area. And work alongside science teachers in the REVEL project, a program for students investigating the origins of life and new aspects of biotechnology. And finally, we'll study how scientists work at such great depth with the remotely operated submarine, Ropos. In 1977, oceanographic scientists and researchers made a remarkable discovery. Deep sea volcanic vents near the Galapagos Islands harbored creatures and dense communities of life unknown to science. They discovered a lush oasis in what was previously thought to be a sunless desert. Like factories at full steam, submarine chimneys belched mineral laden water at over 700 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to melt lead. With a submersible Alvin and its cameras, researchers witnessed for the first time the strange and alien world of hydrothermal vents. I study the types of animals that we find at vents. And what is really intriguing for me is to find that the animals that we're seeing at vents are different. The intriguing thing about hydrothermal vents all around the world is that they are a special fauna. It's a special group of animals evolved to work and live at hot vents. The major animal at the hydrothermal vents, which is in a way the weed, what everything is based on, are the tubers. And those are the animals that have the bacteria inside them. They grow incredibly rapidly, so everything else comes in to feed on them. An example of that is the large spider crab. And when we first found that at vents, it had only been known from two specimens before. Vents were first discovered in 1977. It marked the discovery of the first ecosystem that we knew of on the planet that was powered by chemosynthesis. We knew about chemosynthesis since near the end of the 19th century, but it was always a matter of a few rare and exotic microbes that grew near hot springs on land, but they never did more than their own thing. They did not provide energy for a whole food chain of animals. The initial discovery brought home very clearly that the animals that lived around the hydrothermal vents were not being supported by material falling out of the upper ocean. They were actually being supported by microbial activity that was fed by the volcanic springs on the sea floor. And that was a brand new insight. That, too, caught people by surprise. In the community of Astoria, Oregon, we joined the University of Washington's research vessel, Thomas G. Thompson. In a fascinating eight-day deep diving expedition, we travel to the Endeavor Hot Vents of the Juan de Fuca Ridge. Across the sea floor of the world's oceans runs a mountain range and rift system 40,000 miles long. These are places where the thin, rigid plates that form the hard crust of our planet pull apart and crash together. In the cracks between plates, molten magma wells up, meets cold seawater, and solidifies into a contorted landscape of lava rock. Seawater seeps through the porous rock to unknown depths, is heated, and percolates back to the surface after accumulating a rich brew of minerals. Rising through fissures, the hot water flows in billowing plumes that precipitates the minerals, hence the nickname black smokers. At depths of over a mile and a half, enormous pressure of two tons per square inch prevents superheated seawater from boiling. It is here, in these harsh and inhospitable landscapes, that life on Earth may have begun. Major extinctions on Earth are very much directed towards animals that need oxygen photosynthesis. You think about the comet hitting, it obliterated the sun, the plants went, then the dinosaurs went, et cetera, et cetera, sea level change. That really affects animals on the surface. And we think that one of the reasons we're seeing many odd species at hot vents is because those guys never went extinct. They don't care about the comet hitting, they don't care about sea level climate change, whatever. A very constant, predictable habitat at the bottom of the sea. And as long as you get enough oxygen hanging on for tens of millions of years, you'll keep that community going. And they never went extinct, but many of them are still relics from our past, and a window into the past. Once at the site of the Endeavor hot vents, scientists and technicians must complete a dizzying array of tests before any dives are attempted. A series of navigational instruments are prepared and dropped over the side to drift to the ocean bottom. These transponders aid in navigation, orient the deep diving submersible, and also assist in the mapping of the seafloor. A module known as El Guapo is towed from the ship to test the effectiveness of the transponders. The submersible carries its own relay transponders, who fix the location of the sub in two and three dimensional planes. Every, for every dive, we have a pre-dive checklist we go through, and we check the sub for mechanical integrity, all the cables are plugged in, all the connectors. We're really excited. It looks like the weather's cleared up. We've got a really good chance to put in a first class dive in the next six to eight hours. The main tool in this expedition is the remotely operated vehicle, Ropos, from the Canadian Scientific Submersible Facility. This type of deep ocean research requires a great deal of flexibility. With an impressive array of talents, the unmanned sub is a highly effective means of exploring the deep sea. Broadcast quality video cameras transmit images to the surface ship. Manipulator arms allow operators to collect samples and store them for the return journey. The arms are also useful in deploying and retrieving instruments and tools. High powered artificial lights illuminate the sea floor. I got three big turbo lights, one, two, three featured watts, so that's 1500 watts, plus two incandescent lights, one on the camera down there, one here, for a total of 2000 watts of lighting. Modern, remotely operated deep submersibles have greatly expanded their industrial applications to meet the varied needs of ocean sciences. Ropos makes it much easier to gather clues to the great mysteries of the deep ocean vents. Ropos is somewhat like a child, a bit of a wayward child. I've been involved in the development of it since it was born, and it's right on the edge of what our capabilities can do technologically. So seeing it grow, seeing it develop has been a real thrill. A thick steel line ties Ropos to the surface vessel and transmits data via fiber optic cables enclosed inside its core. Aluminum cage protects Ropos from oceanic swells and the hazards of loading and unloading from support ships in rough seas. The sub is tethered to the cage with a tough and flexible plastic cable. The tether is like a leash, allowing Ropos to accomplish its tasks while the cage absorbs the up and down effects of swells. And this is mission control, a tiny room crammed to the ceiling with monitors and instruments and people. Operators, scientists, and observers crowd into the steamy room. This type of science is a 24-hour-a-day job, and Ropos can stay on the bottom for days at a time. Saw cut, five days later, this thing had grown back. So this is about a meter here. One of the goals of this expedition is to mount a caged instrument on one of the growing columns to measure the amazing generative powers of the vent system. Volcanic activity will quickly envelop the cage with mineral deposits, and next summer, it will be lifted to the surface so the newly formed structure can be studied. Ropos allows the scientists a wealth of opportunities to place instruments in and around the vent fields. A high-powered vacuum, manipulated by one of the sub's arms, suctions animals, sediments, and water samples from the seafloor. Each sample has its own turret-mounted sealed case. Tube worms and other creatures are delicately handled by Ropos. It is extremely difficult to maneuver with such a tangled cargo. To allow Ropos increased time on the bottom and to collect additional samples, a device called the elevator is utilized. On the bottom, it acts as a storage depot for Ropos, allowing the sub to roam the seafloor in search of sampling opportunities. Once a box is full, it's brought back to the elevator for the return trip. When all the boxes are full, the elevator is returned to the surface. When Ropos returns to the ship, scientists rush in to retrieve samples. Marine biology students in a variety of disciplines work with scientists in the daunting task of cataloging and storing countless species and samples. This is a frontier. Many frontiers, there are many frontiers in science, and you can be doing that back in your lab. Somehow, for me personally, it's being out in the wilderness and seeing things that no one has ever seen before. I'm a very visual person, and knowing when I go to the bottom of the ocean that no one's ever looked at this, no one's ever trodden there, and I can be seeing the first, the first time anyone's seen that particular animal doing what it's doing. That is the truth. One of the main focuses of this and other expeditions to the deep sea hot vents is to map the ocean floor. New technologies, such as imagenic sonar, allow an unprecedented opportunity to visualize and study bottom features in fantastic detail. Onboard computers sift through millions of sonar data points to create a moving three-dimensional image. These are the most detailed maps ever constructed of the deep sea floor. Remarkable color copies of the maps are printed on the ship in only a few minutes. Digital cameras mounted on row posts compile hundreds of individual still images. Photos are stitched together in a seamless composite, staggering in its sharpness and detail. In order to work on the sea floor safely, the surface ship must remain stationary within a few meters. Computers continually adjust the ship's position, accounting for currents, high seas, and winds. In a bold step, the Canadian government has designated the Endeavour Field as one of four Pacific region pilot marine protected areas. Once designated, this protected area will conserve and safeguard the ecological integrity of this unique and important marine ecosystem and foster research and education. Generations from now, Canada will be one of the world's few coastal nations that have turned the tide on the decline of its marine environments. Canadian Department of Fisheries and Ocean Scientist, Brian Smiley, is one of the researchers on board the Endeavour expedition. I guess most people, when they think of a protected area, they think of places like Banff and Yellowstone. And it is ironic that offshore, as we move into the first protected areas, that we are looking at a hotbeds area, which looks very similar to what you'd find at Yellowstone and in a smaller sense in Banff. This week at Endeavour, it has been an experience of a lifetime to see the cooperation that is necessary for the geologists and the chemists and the biologists to bring their information, to bring their expertise and to bring their skills together to get a better understanding of this ecosystem. We see the Endeavour hotbeds area as being a pearl in the network of marine protected areas for Canada. On this Endeavour expedition, there were a number of distinguished members of the scientific team. Elementary and secondary science teachers representing American and Canadian schools are along to participate in various studies as part of the REVL project. REVL stands for Research and Education, Volcanoes, Exploration and Life. All includes the interaction of highly motivated science teachers interested in opportunities to engage in cutting edge oceanographic research. Thus, they provide their inquisitive students with an opportunity to join in on the experience of active scientific inquiry. I'm a teacher and we send these down to the bottom of the ocean. And then when we go back to public school in the fall, we can show the students what happens when we send cups down. Basically, the air in the styrofoam gets compressed and squeezed out entirely and the cups shrink. They retain their shape, but they shrink down to about this big. So we can ask the students what they think happened to the cups and how they changed their shape. And this is what they look like after all the air has been squeezed out of them. It's a simple experiment, but it really shows what water pressure can do to something as simple as a styrofoam cup when all the air gets squeezed out of it. I think the REVEL program was a big success. We really got to look firsthand at how scientists do their work from high-tech to low-tech and everything in between. I'm sure when I get back, it's going to energize not only my classroom, but my entire school. After eight days in the open sea, the Thompson and her complement of scientists, teachers, and support crews return to the Canadian city of Victoria. The cooperation between American, Canadian, and European researchers has paved a solid foundation for future projects at the Endeavour hotbeds. Going to sea is an expensive and a difficult business, and you need the expertise of everybody involved, and you can't afford to divide things up. So there's a lot of cooperation among scientists and among groups. Each group can bring perhaps some money, they can bring some skills. So on the operations level, it's very important to have that interaction. I need the fluid chemist, I need the geologist, I need the person working on the sulfides, and then it begins to make sense to me. It doesn't matter what country somebody's from, it's actually, I'm far more interested in what their particular expertise is. One of the most powerful new paradigms or hypotheses that we carry around now in terms of exploring other planets for life deals with the demonstrated fact, largely as a result of the work on the sea floor, in volcanoes, the demonstrated fact that volcanoes can support life without sunlight. And that powerful insight allows us to begin to home in on portions of other planets where we are liable to find active volcanism and liquid water, and there's always carbon in any planetary system. So the combination of those three components over a long enough period of time is liable to generate life of a form that we can recognize. I think that within the lifespan of my children, it's very likely that we'll be moving off planet looking for life elsewhere, and even beyond the solar system in time. We need to have models of where to look and how to find life, what is a viable planet and what is not a viable planet. And these are really crucial types of questions to be asking, because they go far beyond any of the petty day-to-day things that all of us are involved in. And that is what energizes me. I'm just fascinated by the potential of eventually contributing to the understanding of how planets can support life.