Inside the Internet

by Richard Kool

THE weirdest place in the world is what? No, not your classroom, and not my children's bedrooms either. I'm sure the weirdest place of all is one that most of us will never travel to except in virtual reality - a hot vent community on the deep sea floor.

As all green teachers and students know, life on earth depends on the sun for energy. Green plants grab sun energy, do the photosynthetic magic trick, and everything else runs on the product of that magic. Or so we thought, until the mid-1970s when a group of marine geologists discovered an entirely new kind of ecosystem on the floor of the Pacific Ocean (1). Like oases of life in a deep sea desert, these communities are populated by truly strange organisms which run on the energy-rich chemical compounds contained in super-heated (up to 300C) water ejected through cracks in the sea floor. The biology and geology of these hot vent communities has been one of the great discoveries of the 20th century.

Okay, so it's hard to get down to these weird places. But a great primer on the hot vent ecosystems, organisms and their weird geology can be found at the University of Washington's web page (2). There is lots to be seen here, and like any really good web site, it offers side trips into related hyperspace. For instance, the folks at the UW are in the process of creating an on-line adventure to the ocean floor which, when complete, will allow you to see what things might be like were you to travel to hot vents (3). One of my favourite side trips is to the pages of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (4) where you can learn about how the deep sea is explored. There is even a complete users' manual to their famous deep submersible Alvin, from which the hot vent communities were first discovered.

REVEL (Research and Education: Volcanoes, Exploration and Life), based at the University of Washington, helps students and teachers get involved in cutting-edge earth- and life-science research on the hot vent ecosystems. Their site (5) has a great deal of material for teachers as well as a virtual field trip into planet Earth. On your journey, you'll see great graphics of submarine topography (6) displayed with the continents upside down, and going further, you'll encounter amazing underwater images of the hot vent environments just south of Vancouver Island on the Juan de Fuca ridge. If you've never spent time on an oceanographic cruise and want to get a feel for what life on an oceanographic ship might be like, take a look at REVEL's Life on Board page! (7)

With more and more computers capable of dealing with really rich web resources, you can now retrieve current scientific data as well as images and movies (in MPEG format) of the hot vent organisms and processes. For instance, take a look at the great site of the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory's VENTS Program (8). There you can pick up images that students can analyze to determine things such as water flow rates. These include images of Alvin and ROV (Remote Operating Vehicles) dives, earthquake swarm animations, and computer-generated plume models.

As long as the hot core of the earth is super-heating water and ejecting it into the cold deep sea, these oases of strange organisms will continue to flourish regardless of what happens to life on the surface skin of our planet.

1. Discovery and description of organisms in vent ecosystems, Friends of National Zoo: http://www.fonz.org/zglight.htm
2. Introduction to hot vent ecosystems and geology, UW: http://www.ocean.washington.edu/exploraquarium/vent/intro.htm/
3. Adventure travel to the ocean floor (in progress), UW: http://www.ocean.washington.edu/exploraquarium/vent/adventure/astart.htm
4. Deep sea exploration, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute: http://dsogserv.whoi.edu/ships/ships_vehicles.htm
5. Field trip into the earth, REVEL: http://www.ocean.washington.edu/exploraquarium/revel/
6. Submarine topography, REVEL: http://www.ocean.washington.edu/exploraquarium/scaletrip/0earth.html
7. Life on an oceanographic ship, REVEL: http://www.ocean.washington.edu/exploraquarium/revel/96cruise/ed/lob.html
8. Images of hot vent organisms and processes, Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory VENTS Program: http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/vents/