“We do not fully understand how the animals who live on hydrothermal vents find them and come to the vents.”
The #VentUnderworld team has embarked on an expedition to determine how animals are transported to hydrothermal vents and build communities. The team suspects that the answer does not solely lie in the waters above the vents but also in the hydrothermal fluid circulating in the earth’s crust. They have created a new piece of equipment, called a Mesh Box Staining Gadget, to determine if life is traveling through earth’s crevices to form ecosystems on hydrothermal vents.
“We need to know the connectivity between the different habitats, the different environments. The more we know about everything, the more we can also protect it.”
