Time Travel to a Mysterious Underwater World: Scientists Expect Bizarre Adaptations

There are few regions on the planet as strange and mysterious as the untouched seafloors beneath the Artic ice. Scientists are launching an expedition to reveal exotic seafloor life, focusing on an area of hydrothermal vent fields along the Gakkel Ridge, that has been almost entirely cut off from other ecosystems for at least 26 million years.

At this point, we have virtually no idea what’s down there.

“The region has been mostly separated from the Atlantic and Pacific oceans for millions of years, so whatever lives there has since been evolving in relative isolation—much the way animals in Australia did," says Tim Shank, a hydrothermal vent biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). "We know that deep-sea Arctic fauna found away from vents are more than 70 percent different from all others around the world. So at hydrothermal vents we are likely to find completely new suites of species with never-before seen adaptations.”

In fact, the scientists are expecting to find life forms as different from the rest of the Earth’s biology, as an alien planet could produce. Scientists at the NASA Astrobiology Program believe it is possible that the Gakkel Ridge may harbor life forms and environmental conditions consistent with primordial Earth or even other watery planets.

“The origin of life discussion comes up because the rocks that are exposed on this very slow spreading ridge are not volcanic, but instead come directly from Earth’s mantle,” says geochemist Susan Humphris. “The chemistry is very much like the volcanism that occurred on the primordial Earth. If you are thinking about origins of life, you’d like to have an area that is the closest analog to what was happening on the early Earth.”

Geophysicist Robert Reves-Sohn, who will serve as chief scientist during the expedition says, “This is an exciting opportunity to explore and study a portion of Earth’s surface that has been largely inaccessible to science. Any biological habitats at hydrothermal vent fields along the Gakkel Ridge have likely evolved in isolation for tens of millions of years. We may have the opportunity to lay eyes on completely new life forms that have been living in the abyss beneath the Arctic ice pack.”

The 30-member research team will depart on July 1 from Longyearbyen, Svalbard, for a rare expedition to study the Gakkel Ridge, the extension of the mid-ocean ridge system which separates the North American tectonic plate from the Eurasian plate beneath the Arctic Ocean.

They will spend 40 days aboard the Oden, an 108-meter long icebreaker operated by the Swedish Maritime Administration, which will take the researchers almost to the geographic North Pole.

Since the icy waters are too frigid and dangerous for human explorers to navigate, WHOI researchers have built two new autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to aide them on the expedition. The robotic vehicles will navigate the underwater world, using cameras and bottom-mapping sonar systems and collect samples for the multdiciplinary team to study. The team is hoping to discover exotic life forms that may demonstrate incredible adaptations, and even help determine how life originated on Earth.

Posted by Rebecca Sato

http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=7545&tid=282&cid=28811&ct=162

Comments

[annonymous]

Why is there a picture of the sun taken in x-ray with this article?

Ooops! We were trying to find something impressionistic that represented a "watery" ancient world -this was the closest our photo editor could approximate. Man you guys are sharp! : )) Editors.