We have entered the gut of the East Pacific Rise desirous of an animal lacking a gut. Averaging, and at times exceeding, blackened submarine depths of 2500 meters, the Riftia tube worm flourishes in thrumming cities of chiton; their interlocking cabled architectures capped by crimson groves of labial, lipstick-like protuberances (the hemoglobin-rich gill structures used for harvesting vented sulfide). This industrious chemosynthetic display is set within a lavatic theater of flash-formed obsidian, albinotic hoards of crustacean, echinoderm and mollusk, swarming amphipods and ghostly eelpouts, crack-dwelling myofauna and microbial battlefronts existing as a variety of lubricious films (a.k.a. “biofilms”).
The protective chiton tubes of the worms are slicked with filamentous bacteria resembling something between angel hair and mucous and are dotted with chocolate chip-like limpets and lesions left by cunning bivalves. In this arena the dictum is surface area: more surface area for colonization equals more partnerships between species which in turn equals more biomass. Such is the law of the intestine as well. There are no visible plants among the aphotic vistae which routinely heave with ‘marine snow’ (errant flotsam and microplankton).
Ennobled by eternal darkness, this evolutionary masterwork is slimy, cold, dank, sulfuric.
At this depth no existence is autonomous. Everything continually culminates as maximal, hyperbolic, undead – every cloister, every escarpment is littered with mutualistic life. Can a amoral allegory be extracted from such a sight? – One that emphasizes the dire importance of interspecies partnerships in the age of climate crisis. I believe so. These aliens and their darkened shrines can teach us. The specialization of every function, every organ, every filament, every shell, film, fold, every relationship, immediately presents a contrasting tableau of humanity as antediluvian. To truly admire this realm is to banish our (humankind’s) assumed position of centrality/superiority in the world.
Resisting the anthropomorphization of this environment or tinkering with analogies of nebulae or star galaxies is quite the daily chore. I am guilty of this. Our species intrudes with artificial light and still there is so much we can never illuminate. This is a death of knowledge just as much as it is a bounty of discovery. One take away parable: in this domain of bacteria, all imaginaries of desolation are dispelled. The blackness is lush.
In less than 20 year’s time this biotope will be completely eradicated, effaced, made molten by a deep-sea eruption. It will be reborn hard in a frigid broth as basalt blobs and mounds. And once again – the tube worm prophecy of rapid succession will be fulfilled in the lavatic theater’s dawn of hyperactivity.
*Note: the verbose morphology of this passage should be approached like a sculpture reflexive of the hyperactivity/species richness observed in this specific benthic field.
