Science and sensibility

Seamounts contain stories that would put the science fiction novels the picture is reminiscent of to shame. Each one is like an underwater Galapagos, driving speciation and providing a home for species marginalized in the open ocean by human impact. Seamount ecosystems are based not on energy produced by photosynthesis like our own but on energy chemotrophic bacteria and archaea generate from sulfur leaking from the seamount's vents. Since the whole ecosystem relies on the resonably small area that the vents cover each seamount is like an underwater island. Organisms that colonize a seamount evolve rapidly into divergent lifestyles and undergo adaptive radiation to fill available niches. A recent study of 25 seamounts in the Tasman Sea discovered about 280 species not previously described; some living fossils from groups thought to have been extinct since the Mesozoic era. This study and others have found that about 40% of the species on a given seamount are endemic to that specific mountain.

The website logging the teams trip to the seamounts has a lot more information about why they are out there and I encourage you to check it out. It really is a great opportunity to get to see scientific discoveries as they happen. This has got to be better than the massive expanses of red rock the various mars rovers have revealed.

Edited same day: w.bloggar's spell check obviously worked out this was a science post, it corrected my misspelling of 'American' to americium!