Our very own cold seep!
A wonderful discovery, just twenty-eight miles west of where I live. Article is quoted in full from the North County Times website.
ENVIRONMENT: Scripps students find deep-sea oasis off coast of Oceanside
BY DEBORAH SULLIVAN BRENNAN
July 30, 2012
After exploring deep-sea ecosystems along the far reaches of the Pacific Coast, a group of Scripps graduate student researchers found one much closer to home ---- a mound of exotic marine life thriving on the dark ocean bottom just 20 miles from Oceanside.
Last week, they announced their discovery of the ecosystem, where bacteria use methane seeping from the ocean floor to produce nutrients in the absence of sunlight. The bacteria form the food base for a host of deep-sea clams, worms and other creatures.
The site is about 20 miles off Oceanside, 3,400 feet below the water's surface. Students mapped a mound the size of a city block and the height of a two-story building.
They collected sediment cores that showed sulfur-scented black mud typical of an underwater methane seep, where the naturally occurring gas escapes from fissures in the seafloor. The cores also revealed seep-dwelling animals exquisitely adapted to the site's frigid water, low oxygen and toxic gases.
Among the creatures they collected were deep-sea clams and threadlike tubeworms called siboglinids, which lack a mouth or gut and get nutrition through a symbiotic relationship with bacteria living inside them.
Some clams have vivid red flesh because of hemoglobin that efficiently processes the site's limited oxygen, said researcher Alexis Pasulka, who studies biological oceanography at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
"These are very specialized organisms that have adapted to live with symbionts, but also in these low-oxygen environments," Pasulka said. "We consider it sort of an extreme ecosystem of life."
Thriving amid toxic gas and darkness, the undersea colonies could help illuminate the origins of life, said researcher Benjamin Grupe, whose specialty is biological oceanography.
"One thought is that these sorts of extreme conditions are more similar to what the early Earth was like when life first started evolving," he said. "Some researchers think they can learn more about those early steps and how life could exist when oxygen was not available."
The animals' unusual metabolisms could also have practical applications one day, Grupe said.
"We're still finding new forms of microbial processes that we didn't know about," Grupe said. "It's sort of an unknown whether that might to lead to biomedical research, other types of medical technologies."
Jillian Maloney a graduate student in geosciences, also examined the fault lines below the seep, using sound beams to map the geology. She hopes to study how the seeps move and how earthquakes affect the fault lines.
Scientists have identified more than 100 regions along the world's continental margins where the seeps occur, said Grupe, who has worked on seeps in Oregon and Costa Rica.
Finding one in their own backyard opens new research possibilities for Scripps researchers, he said. Pasulka, Grupe and Maloney will join an 11-day follow-up expedition to the site in December, when they hope to use remote vehicles to get images of the site.
"The existence of a methane seep just a few hours from San Diego should allow Scripps scientists to visit frequently, studying how this dynamic ecosystem changes over days, months and years," Grupe said. "Such regular data collection is difficult at most cold seeps, which rarely occur so close to ports or research institutions."
Here's footage of the first cold seep to be discovered, in the Gulf of Mexico, in 1990. The video is from the documentary series Blue Planet: Seas of Life and runs about three minutes.
ENVIRONMENT: Scripps students find deep-sea oasis off coast of Oceanside
BY DEBORAH SULLIVAN BRENNAN
July 30, 2012
After exploring deep-sea ecosystems along the far reaches of the Pacific Coast, a group of Scripps graduate student researchers found one much closer to home ---- a mound of exotic marine life thriving on the dark ocean bottom just 20 miles from Oceanside.
Last week, they announced their discovery of the ecosystem, where bacteria use methane seeping from the ocean floor to produce nutrients in the absence of sunlight. The bacteria form the food base for a host of deep-sea clams, worms and other creatures.
The site is about 20 miles off Oceanside, 3,400 feet below the water's surface. Students mapped a mound the size of a city block and the height of a two-story building.
They collected sediment cores that showed sulfur-scented black mud typical of an underwater methane seep, where the naturally occurring gas escapes from fissures in the seafloor. The cores also revealed seep-dwelling animals exquisitely adapted to the site's frigid water, low oxygen and toxic gases.
Among the creatures they collected were deep-sea clams and threadlike tubeworms called siboglinids, which lack a mouth or gut and get nutrition through a symbiotic relationship with bacteria living inside them.
Some clams have vivid red flesh because of hemoglobin that efficiently processes the site's limited oxygen, said researcher Alexis Pasulka, who studies biological oceanography at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
"These are very specialized organisms that have adapted to live with symbionts, but also in these low-oxygen environments," Pasulka said. "We consider it sort of an extreme ecosystem of life."
Thriving amid toxic gas and darkness, the undersea colonies could help illuminate the origins of life, said researcher Benjamin Grupe, whose specialty is biological oceanography.
"One thought is that these sorts of extreme conditions are more similar to what the early Earth was like when life first started evolving," he said. "Some researchers think they can learn more about those early steps and how life could exist when oxygen was not available."
The animals' unusual metabolisms could also have practical applications one day, Grupe said.
"We're still finding new forms of microbial processes that we didn't know about," Grupe said. "It's sort of an unknown whether that might to lead to biomedical research, other types of medical technologies."
Jillian Maloney a graduate student in geosciences, also examined the fault lines below the seep, using sound beams to map the geology. She hopes to study how the seeps move and how earthquakes affect the fault lines.
Scientists have identified more than 100 regions along the world's continental margins where the seeps occur, said Grupe, who has worked on seeps in Oregon and Costa Rica.
Finding one in their own backyard opens new research possibilities for Scripps researchers, he said. Pasulka, Grupe and Maloney will join an 11-day follow-up expedition to the site in December, when they hope to use remote vehicles to get images of the site.
"The existence of a methane seep just a few hours from San Diego should allow Scripps scientists to visit frequently, studying how this dynamic ecosystem changes over days, months and years," Grupe said. "Such regular data collection is difficult at most cold seeps, which rarely occur so close to ports or research institutions."
Here's footage of the first cold seep to be discovered, in the Gulf of Mexico, in 1990. The video is from the documentary series Blue Planet: Seas of Life and runs about three minutes.
Click to view