Deep in the Sea

The movie Deep Sea, Deep Secret is about a team of people from the Woods Hole Marine Biological lab exploring Deep Sea hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean. The are holes in the crust of the earth where magma seeps up and causes hot streams of mineral rich smoke to bubble up in to the cold deep sea water. It is a condition that almost no organisms could survive, but somehow a few species have found a way to live near these vents.

The people of Woods Hole Marine Biological lab are well known for their marine biology work and for making annual trips to deep sea hydrothermal vents. There is so much work involved in setting up everything needed to make these dangerous trips that not every institute can do. Holger Jannasch is a research at the lab that has made major contributions with deep sea hydrothermal vent research. His team was the first to make a trip to collect sample from these vents in the Alvin, one of a very small number of submersibles that is able to reach the depth necessary to study the vents.

The researchers from the lab found a deep sea hydrothermal vent that was in the process of forming that they called 9 north. The vents are formed when the magma rising to the surface almost instantaneously cool and form chimney like structures. This was an important find because it allowed the researchers to see how these vents are form and where the organisms that live there come from.
At the vents there are small white crabs that live all over the place. They feed on tube worms, small fish, and even each other. They are also the toughest organisms at the vents because they are able to live outside of the ocean as well, the only one outside of the vents able to do so.