Time to be a Marine Biologist for a day.....Lets look at the critters that hang near hydrothermal vents. Use the Internet information (look right) to answer these questions specifically related to marine biology:

  • What does a marine biologist do?
  • Review your definition of 'chemosynthesis' from Part II.
  • Identify six organisms that have been found around hydrothermal vents.
    • Describe these organisms and their feeding habits.

Connecting Chemistry and Biology

  • Using what you have learned in Parts I & II, you job is to design a critter that could survive near hydrothermal vents.
    • What type of environment will it hang out near?
    • What is the chemical environment?
    • What will it eat?


  

Online Resources

Life with Toxic Sulfide - this illustrated talk covering hydrothermal vents (Access Excellence)


Hot Vents - excellent images of vents, vent creatures and oceanographic vessels (SUNY Stony Brook)


Scientists Learn How Tube Worms Colonize Hydrothermal Vents - short article (Scientific American News)


Exploring the deep ocean floor: Hot springs and strange creatures - brief notes but excellent images of vent organisms and oceanographic vessels (United States Geological Survey)


Creature Features - life forms at a hydrothermal vent with images and movies (UD College of Marine Studies)


Life in the Extreme: Tubeworm - (DiscoverySchool.com)


Savage Earth: Black Smokers - (PBS online)


Black Smokers and Giant Worms - good coverage of organisms and food chains at hydrothermal vents (Course World)


Life in Extreme Environments - movie showing various life forms of the hydrothermal vents (UD)


Beneath the Sea: Life Above Boiling - an interview with Bob Ballard the oceanographer who discovered 'black smokers' (PBS Online)


Habitats: Hydrothermal Vents - Hydrothermal Vent Life - (Office of Naval Research)


Creatures of the Thermal Vents - description of a variety of organisms found at hydrothermal vents (Smithsonian Institute)

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An Undersea Quest for New Life - a report from a 1997 expedition to investigate 'black smokers' (New York Times)

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Hydrothermal vents: Tropic relations - a university level PowerPoint presentation on vent life including food webs (Dalhousie University)


Deep Sea Vents: Life at the Extreme - short article with excellent images (National Geographic)


Scientists Determine How Chemistry Keeps Weird Worms 'Out Of Hot Water' At Steaming Deep-Sea Vents - (UD College of Marine Studies)


Dendronotus comteti Valdés & Bouchet, 1998 - a rare creature from a hydrothermal vent (Australian Museum)


Creatures living around deep-sea vents in the South Pacific - (Venture Deep Ocean)


Deep sea aliens or long lost relatives? - short article with great images (the Lab, ABC)


Vent Biology - life forms of the hydrothermal vents( Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)


Life As We (Didn't) Know It - (Science@NASA)


Scientists Succeed at First-Ever Attempt to Sequence DNA at Sea – excellent photographs (National Science Foundation)


Vent Animals - (Access Excellence)