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Source: ONE News
American scientists say they have found evidence of hydrothermal vents on the seafloor between New Zealand and Antarctica.
Hydrothermal vents spew heated fluids - often containing dissolved minerals such as gold, zinc, and copper - with the plumes from the vents influencing influence ocean chemistry and providing a source of energy for a complex web of organisms.
More than 220 vents have been discovered worldwide - many of them on the Kermedec Arc between New Zealand and Tonga. So far no one has found them in the rough and frigid waters off Antarctica, but the new research has narrowed the places to look.
Geochemist Gisela Winckler at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory analysed thousands of oceanographic measurements to pinpoint half a dozen spots where vents are likely to be found on the remote Pacific Antarctic Ridge.
They are about 3200km from New Zealand, 1600km from the coast of Antarctica, according to the research published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
"The Pacific Antarctic ridge is one of the ridges we know least about," she says. "It would be fantastic if researchers were to dive to the seafloor to study the vents we believe are there."
The Lamont scientists were tracking plumes in the Southern Ocean of rare helium-3, an isotope found in Earth's mantle and in the magma bubbling below vents, when they found one coming from the Pacific Antarctic Ridge.
The likely sites cover 530km of the 6900km ridge, a chain of volcanic mountains on the seabed far from commercial shipping lanes.
The search for vents off Antarctica may be unpredictable, but one of the Lamont scientists, Robert Newton, said they can be pinpointed by tracking the rich mineral soup coming out of the "black smokers".
Scientists have discovered new weird microbial life forms that live around such vents, feeding off flecks of gold, sulphur, and other minerals from Earth's interior. The Pacific Antarctic Ridge may support organisms which will provide important clues about how creatures vary between the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
