Cold Seep

Information about Cold Seep

Tubeworms, soft corals and chemosynthetic mussels at a seep located 3,000 metres down on the Florida Escarpment. Eelpouts, a Galatheid crab and an alvinocarid shrimp feed on mussels damaged during a sampling exercise.

A cold seep (sometimes called a cold vent) is an area of the ocean floor where hydrogen sulfide, methane and other hydrocarbon-rich fluid seepage occurs. Cold seeps are distinct from hydrothermal vents: the former's emissions are of the same temperature as the surrounding seawater, whereas the latter's emissions are super-heated. Cold seeps constitute a biome supporting several endemic species.

Entire communities of light independent organisms - known as extremophiles - develop in and around cold seeps, most relying on a symbiotic relationship with chemoautotrophic bacteria. These prokaryotes, both Archaea and Eubacteria, process sulfides and methane through chemosynthesis into chemical energy. Higher organisms, namely vesicomyid clams and siboglinid tube worms use this energy to power their own life processes, and in exchange provide both safety and a reliable source of food for the bacteria. Other bacteria form mats, blanketing sizable areas in the process.

Beggiatoal bacterial mat at a seep on Blake Ridge, off South Carolina. The red dots are range-finding laser beams.

Unlike hydrothermal vents, which are volatile and ephemeral environments, cold seeps emit at a slow and dependable rate. Likely owing to the differing temperatures and stability, cold seep organisms are much longer-lived than those inhabiting hydrothermal vents. Indeed, recent research has revealed that the seep tubeworm Lamellibrachia luymesi may be the longest living noncolonial invertebrate known, with a minimum lifespan of between 170 and 250 years.

Cold seeps were first discovered in 1984 by Dr. Charles Paull in the Gulf of Mexico at a depth of 3,200 metres. Since then, seeps have been discovered in other parts of the world's oceans, including the Monterey Canyon just off Monterey Bay, California, the Sea of Japan, off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, in the Atlantic off of Africa, in waters off the coast of Alaska, and under an ice shelf in Antarctica [1]. The deepest seep community known is found in the Japan trench at a depth of 7326 m.

Cold seeps develop unique topography over time, where reactions between methane and seawater create carbonate rock formations and reefs. These reactions may also be dependent on bacterial activity. Ikaite, a hydrous calcium carbonate, can be associated with oxidizing methane at cold seeps.

External links

Earth's oceans
(World Ocean)

Arctic Ocean
Atlantic Ocean
Indian Ocean
Pacific Ocean
Southern Ocean

An ocean (from Ωκεανός, Okeanos
..... Click the link for more information.

Hydrogen sulfide (hydrogen sulphide in British English) is the chemical compound with the formula H₂S. This colorless, toxic and flammable gas is responsible for the foul odor of rotten eggs and flatulence.
..... Click the link for more information.

Methane is a chemical compound with the molecular formula CH₄. It is the simplest alkane, and the principal component of natural gas. Methane's bond angles are 109.
..... Click the link for more information.

hydrocarbon is an organic compound consisting entirely of hydrogen and carbon. With relation to chemical terminology, aromatic hydrocarbons or arenes, alkanes, alkenes and alkyne-based compounds composed entirely of carbon or hydrogen are referred to as "Pure" hydrocarbons, whereas
..... Click the link for more information.

A hydrothermal vent, also called a "black smoker", is a fissure in a planet's surface from which geothermally heated water issues. Hydrothermal vents are commonly found near volcanically active places, tectonic plates that are moving apart, ocean basins, and hotspots.
..... Click the link for more information.

A biome is a major geographical area of ecologically similar communities of plants, animals, and soil organisms, often referred to as ecosystems. Biomes are defined based on factors such as plant structures (such as trees, shrubs, and grasses), leaf types (such as broadleaf and
..... Click the link for more information.

An extremophile is an organism that thrives in and may even require physically or geochemically extreme conditions that are detrimental to the majority of life on Earth.

Most extremophiles are microbes.
..... Click the link for more information.

symbiosis (from the Greek: συμ, sym, "with"; and βίοσίς, biosis, "living") can be used to describe various degrees of close relationship between organisms of different species.
..... Click the link for more information.

Chemotrophs are organisms that obtain energy by the oxidation of electron donating molecules in their environments. These molecules can be organic (organotrophs) or inorganic (lithotrophs). The chemotroph designation is in contrast to phototrophs which utilize solar energy.
..... Click the link for more information.

Bacteria

Phyla

Actinobacteria
Aquificae
Chlamydiae
Bacteroidetes/Chlorobi
Chloroflexi
Chrysiogenetes
Cyanobacteria
Deferribacteres
Deinococcus-Thermus
Dictyoglomi
Fibrobacteres/Acidobacteria
Firmicutes
Fusobacteria
..... Click the link for more information.

Archaea
Woese, Kandler & Wheelis, 1990

Phyla

Crenarchaeota
Euryarchaeota
Korarchaeota
Nanoarchaeota
ARMAN
The Archaea (
..... Click the link for more information.

Chemosynthesis is the biological conversion of 1-carbon molecules (usually carbon dioxide or methane) and nutrients into organic matter using the oxidation of inorganic molecules (e.g.
..... Click the link for more information.

Siboglinidae
Caullery, 1914

Genera

Birsteinia
Choanophorus
Cyclobrachia
Lamellibrachia
Lamellisabella
Osedax
Paraescarpia
Ridgeia
Riftia

..... Click the link for more information.

tube worm may refer to any of a number of unrelated tube-dwelling worm-like invertebrates.

These include chiefly various polychaetes, specifically the family Siboglinidae (beard worms), Serpulidae, and related families of the order Canalipalpata.
..... Click the link for more information.

Lamellibrachia is a genus of the tube worm related to the giant tube worm, Riftia pachyptila. It lives at deep-sea cold seeps where hydrocarbons (oil and methane) are leaking out of the seafloor.
..... Click the link for more information.

20th century - 21st century
1950s 1960s 1970s - 1980s - 1990s 2000s 2010s
1981 1982 1983 - 1984 - 1985 1986 1987

Year 1984 (MCMLXXXIV
..... Click the link for more information.

The Gulf of Mexico is the ninth largest body of water in the world. It is an ocean basin largely surrounded by the North American continent and the island of Cuba. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States, on the southwest and
..... Click the link for more information.

Monterey Canyon is a submarine canyon in Monterey Bay, California often studied by the scientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories.

Monterey Canyon begins at Moss Landing, California (long. = -121.79; lat. = 36.
..... Click the link for more information.

Monterey Bay is a bay of the Pacific Ocean, on the coast of California, south of San Francisco. The roughly semicircular bay is ringed by a segment of California State Route 1 which connects Santa Cruz at the north end to Monterey at the south end.
..... Click the link for more information.

This page is currently protected from editing until disputes have been resolved.
Protection is not an endorsement of the current [ version] ([ protection log]).
..... Click the link for more information.

Motto
Â¡Vivan siempre el trabajo y la paz! (Spanish)
"May Work And Peace Live Forever"
Anthem
Noble patria, tu hermosa bandera (Spanish)
..... Click the link for more information.

Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30,221,532 kmÂ² (11,668,545 sq mi) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area, and 20.4% of the total land area.
..... Click the link for more information.

Alaska

Flag of Alaska Seal
Nickname(s): The Last Frontier
Motto(s): "North to the Future"

Official language(s) None^[1]
Spoken language(s) English 85.7%,
Native North American 5.
..... Click the link for more information.

An ice shelf is a thick, floating platform of ice that forms where a glacier or ice sheet flows down to a coastline and onto the ocean surface. Ice shelves are found in Antarctica, Greenland and Canada only.
..... Click the link for more information.

Editing of this page by unregistered or newly registered users is currently disabled due to vandalism.
If you are prevented from editing this page, and you wish to make a change, please discuss changes on the talk page, request unprotection, log in, or .
..... Click the link for more information.

carbonate is a salt or ester of carbonic acid.

Applications

Soda water (also known as Seltzer water) is water with CO₂ dissolved under pressure. The taste of soda water was discovered by the 18th century chemist Joseph Priestley.
..... Click the link for more information.

Ikaite is the mineral name for the hexahydrate of calcium carbonate, CaCO₃Â·6H₂O. Ikaite is colorless when pure. It is usually considered a rare mineral, but this is likely due to difficulty in preserving samples.
..... Click the link for more information.

This article is copied from an article on Wikipedia.org - the free encyclopedia created and edited by online user community. The text was not checked or edited by anyone on our staff. Although the vast majority of the wikipedia encyclopedia articles provide accurate and timely information please do not assume the accuracy of any particular article. This article is distributed under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License.

Herod_Archelaus