Deep Sea Floor Communities

Scientists have long assumed that life on earth originated in the oceans and the recent discovery of communities of microbes and animals that congregate around hot spring vents in the deep sea has buoyed speculation that the earliest life on our planet may have occurred in the depths of the ocean in the absence of sunlight.

Deep sea floor communities.

Future supplies of rare minerals for global industries with high tech products may depend on deep sea mining. A deep sea community is any community of organisms associated by a shared habitat in the deep sea deep sea communities remain largely unexplored due to the technological and logistical challenges and expense involved in visiting this remote biome because of the unique challenges particularly the high barometric pressure extremes of temperature and absence of light it was long believed. False marine communities evolve more rapidly than terrestrial communities. We revisited the only midsize deep sea disturbance and recolonization experiment carried out in 1989 in the peru basin nodule field to compare habitat integrity.

The abyssal plain areas like deep sea coral whale falls and brine pools polar regions such as the antarctic and arctic coral reefs the deep sea such as the community found in the abyssal water column hydrothermal vents kelp forests mangroves the open ocean rocky shores salt marshes and mudflats and. Which of the following is not true of deep ocean. About 15 years ago several fascinating discoveries were made in this sparsely populated environment. A seamount is a large geologic landform that rises from the ocean floor but that does not reach to the water s surface and thus is not an island islet or cliff rock seamounts are typically formed from extinct volcanoes that rise abruptly and are usually found rising from the seafloor to 1 000 4 000 m 3 300 13 100 ft in height.

Deep sea vent communities. During a trawling expedition a bunch of woody material was recovered from the bottom. Feature is exemplified by east africa the rhine valley and the baikal in siberia. Hydrothermal vents are like geysers or hot springs on the ocean floor.

What feature of the ocean floor develops where the oceanic lithosphere bends downward and sinks into the mantle. Seawater circulates deep in the ocean s crust and becomes super heated by hot magma. Most of the deep sea floor in the gulf of mexico is composed of soft rather featureless muddy sediment. With the exception of hydrothermal vent communities where hot water is emitted into the cold waters the deep sea temperature remains between about 1 to about 4 c.

Where in the oceans are biological communities thriving without sunlight. Did life originate in the abyss. However water never freezes in the deep sea note that because of salt seawater freezes at 1 8 c. However environmental standards for seafloor integrity and recovery from environmental impacts are missing.