(MW / 14-04-10) An expedition supervised by scientists of the National Oceanographic Center in Southampton (UK) has discovered the deepest volcanic underwater vents in the world. Knowing as black smokers, they are 5,000 meters deep in the Cayman depression in the Caribbean Sea, according to what the institution itself has informed in a press release.

The researchers used a remote-controlled vehicle of deep dive and discovered thin spirals of copper and iron in the seabed, eruptions of water hot enough to melt lead and 800 meters deeper than the previously observed.

Deep sea vents are underwater sources of extremely hot water emerging from the seabed. The researchers study the colonies of creatures that proliferate thanks to these warm underwater columns, since they give information about marine life in the world, the possibility of life on other planets and even how life began on Earth.

The deepest volcanic fault

The Cayman depression is the deepest underwater volcanic fault in the world and covers the Caribbean seabed. The pressure, almost 5,000 metes in the bottom of the depression, is equivalent to 500 times the normal atmospheric pressure. The researchers compare now marine life in the depression abyss in Cayman to the known one in other sea vents to understand the life chain in the deep ocean.

The scientists will also study the chemistry of the hot water that is expelled through the vents and the geology of the underwater volcanoes where these vents are, to know the basic geological and geochemical processes that shape the world.

According to Doug Connelly, head scientist in the expedition, “we hope that our discovering will give us new revelations about the important elements to biogeochemistry in one of the most extreme environments in Nature”.

Bramley Murton, pilot of the marine vehicle that has walked around these vents for the firs time says that the environment he discovered “was like walking over another world surface. The multicoloured tones of the mineral spirals and the fluorescent blue microbial mats covering them were not alike anything I had seen before”.