We already know what a black smoker is like. At the bottom of the ocean in the rift valleys of the mid-ocean ridges, jets of very hot water burst out under pressure through the thickness of the crust. This is the water that penetrated through cracks into the oceanic lithosphere and there heated up to 300–400 degrees due to volcanic heat. Along the way, a lot of hydrogen sulfide, sulfides and metal oxides dissolved in it, the solid particles of which, falling out when the water cools, give it a black color. Therefore, the jets of water escaping from the lithosphere resemble clouds of black smoke, which is why they got their name. Gradually, during the cooling process, solid particles settle and form conical pipes around the water fountains. Their height reaches several tens of meters. The landscape resembles a huge factory on the ocean floor, with black smoke pouring out of its many chimneys.
Rice. 1. Diagram of the structure of a black smoker.
Serious research into black smokers became possible only after the creation of special deep-sea guided vehicles. Miniature submarines allowed researchers to dive to depths of several thousand meters, see the bottom with their own eyes and collect soil samples using mechanical manipulators. And then a surprise awaited the oceanographers - in the rift zones on enormous depth real oases with rich fauna were found. Usually at great ocean depths, where it never penetrates sunlight, the number and biomass of animals are very small. And rift zones with their hot volcanic gases and high concentrations poisonous chemical compounds all the more so, as it seemed, there must be valleys of death among those already not too rich in life depths of the sea. However, the very first photographs taken by researchers through the windows of underwater vehicles showed a colossal abundance of living creatures around the smokers. All together they form an integral hierarchical ecosystem around the smoker, in which different kinds animals are connected by a food chain. At the very top of the smoker's chimney, the temperature is approximately 350–200 degrees. Almost no one lives there.
Bacteria live lower down, where the pipe walls are 4–6 cm thick and the temperature is 100–120 degrees. Tangles of billions of bacterial cells, capable, oddly enough, of surviving at such high temperatures, form so-called mats or pillows with an area of up to several square meters and several centimeters thick.
Below, at temperatures of 50–80 degrees, bacteria are replaced by Pompeian worms. These are the only animals on Earth that can survive at such high temperatures. The body of the worm is located in a tube and is about 12 centimeters long. They are colored bright red, which is due to the excessively high content of hemoglobin in their blood. Scientists called them Pompeii worms because, like the inhabitants of ancient Pompeii in Italy, they live on the edge of a volcano that could destroy them at any moment. The smoker's "ash" is constantly falling on top of them. And small ones crawl between the Pompeian worms annelids, which look for empty pipes abandoned by their owners in order to settle in them. 
Rice. 2. Pompeian worm.
Even lower, at a distance from the mouth of the smoker, where the temperature drops below 40 degrees, plexuses of white tubes of giant (up to 2.5 m) worms with bright scarlet tentacles are visible. These worms live in chitinous or protein tubes, which are attached at the bottom to the surface of the smoker's pipe. Their scarlet tentacles, filled with blood, hang from above like a beard. Hence the name of this type of worm: pogonophora - bearing a beard. And the variety of pogonophora discovered on black smokers was called vestimentifera. 
Rice. 3. Vestimentifera.
Further, the space around the smoker's pipe for several tens of meters is populated by huge bivalves 30–40 centimeters long. Thousands crawl between the shellfish and in the thickets of pipes white crabs And blind crayfish, millions shrimp etc. In total, about 500 different species of animals have been discovered, and for 80% of them there are no analogues on the surface of the ocean. 
Rice. 4. Giant bivalves. On the top ecological pyramid smokers are predators - deep sea octopuses and predatory fish Termarzes (hellish Cerberus). Slowly and steadily they swim around looking for crabs or shrimp for lunch. 
Rice. 5. Termartzes Cerberus (hellish Cerberus).
The beauty and richness of the communities of black smokers, in sharp contrast to the poor and monotonous population of the ocean floor, so amazed researchers that some of the hydrothermal oases are called scientific literature very poetic: “Garden of Eden”, “Rose Garden”, etc. But the question arises: how is life maintained in these gardens of Eden, where sunlight does not penetrate and which are full of substances that are poisonous from our point of view? These are hydrogen sulfide, heavy metal sulfides, carbon dioxide etc. Their concentration in the waters of a smoker exceeds the concentration in normal sea water hundreds of millions of times. For terrestrial organisms and those that live in the ocean in the surface layer, this would be fatal. And the animals of smokers survive calmly in such an environment. Let's add to this high temperatures and ultra-high pressures prevailing in the depths of the ocean. Now scientists already know the answer to this question.
It turned out that the basis of life in smokers is bacteria. These bacteria are not quite ordinary. They themselves live by absorbing hydrogen sulfide from water and processing it chemically. These chemical reactions release energy, just as heat is released when fuel burns. Then, using this energy, bacteria synthesize nutrients from carbon dioxide and water. organic matter, just as plants do in terrestrial communities. Only plants do not use chemical energy for this, but the radiant energy of the sun. The process of formation of nutrient organic substances in the green parts of plants from carbon dioxide and water using solar energy called photosynthesis. In contrast, the way bacteria synthesize organic nutrients using energy chemical reactions called chemosynthesis. These nutrients primarily support the life of the bacteria themselves. Then other, larger and more highly organized members of the community feed on the bacteria.
Of course, not all hydrothermal inhabitants feed directly on bacteria. The system is more complex: there are only a few of these types. IN Pacific Ocean these are vestimentifera and various types of bivalves. Rimikaris shrimp are common in the Atlantic. They lack ordinary eyes, but they have developed a special organ - thermal eyes - that operate in the infrared range and allow them to see streams of boiling water. 
Rice. 6. Accumulation of shrimp. When magnified, white thermal eyes are visible. What's going on in Indian Ocean- it’s not entirely clear yet, because the first hydrothermal fields were literally just found there, but there are also rimikaris on them.
Of course, it is inconvenient for all these species to simply collect bacteria, because although there are a lot of bacteria at hydrotherms, they are not always and not everywhere. Therefore, it is safer to cultivate them yourself somewhere at hand. Namely - on or in your own body. Bivalves breed bacteria in the gills. Rimikaris shrimp grow bacterial gardens directly on their own oral limbs and scrape them into their mouths as needed. This is a difficult matter: bacteria need the maximum concentration of any chemical, and this is where the jets of hydrothermal fluid are not yet diluted with bottom water. And therefore very, very hot. Shrimps crawl into the blackest smoke to graze their bacteria, balancing on a fine line: get too close and you get cooked, not close enough and you sit there hungry. Therefore, among the Rimikaris, every now and then you come across individuals with burnt legs and antennae. Here it is important how well the thermal eyes of these animals “see”.
But the vestimentifers were the most cunning of all. When studying them, it was discovered that as adults they have neither a mouth nor an intestine. How do they eat? It turned out that vestimentiferans have a special organ in the body - a “trophosome”. 
Rice. 7. Dissected vestimentifera. Electron microscopic studies have shown that large trophosome cells contain billions of bacteria. It turns out that vestimentiferans grow bacteria right inside their bodies.
How do hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide, necessary for feeding bacteria, get deep into the body of vestimentifera? It turned out that both substances are transported circulatory system vestimentifera, which contains two capillary systems: one in the tentacles and the other in the trophosome. By using blood vessels The host organism absorbs hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide from the water and delivers it to the bacteria, as well as the oxygen necessary for respiration. Bacteria, protected inside the host’s body from adverse effects, receive hydrogen sulfide and oxygen from it. The host from time to time eats part of the continuously multiplying bacteria. With bacteria, it receives organic substances, which serve as the only source of nutrition for the vestimentifera. Thus, the cohabitation of bacteria and vestimentifera is a mutually beneficial symbiosis.
But vestimentifers are not born like this right away. A study of vestimentifera eggs showed that there are no bacteria in them and, therefore, bacteria are not transmitted from mother to offspring. Where do the bacteria that live in the vestimentiferal trophosome cells come from? The answer to this question was obtained by studying the larval development of vestimentifera. It turned out that their larvae have a normally developed mouth and intestines. For several days they swim in the water column with the help of a corolla of cilia, then they descend to the substrate and crawl along the surface of the ground. The larvae ingest chemosynthetic bacteria from external environment, become infected with them, after which the digestive organs of young vestimentifera die off, and the intestine turns into an organ of bacterial nutrition - a trophosome.
So it turns out that the main actors, due to which life in black smokers is maintained, are precisely the tiny worker bacteria.
Black smokers. Photo dfo-mpo.gc.ca
In science for a long time It was believed that living organisms could exist only from the energy of the Sun. Jules Verne in his novel “Journey to the Center of the Earth” described underworld with dinosaurs and ancient plants. However this fiction. But who would have thought that there would be a world isolated from the energy of the Sun with absolutely different living organisms. And he was found at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
Photo geo.uni-bremen.de
Back in the fifties of the twentieth century, it was believed that life could not exist in the ocean depths. The invention of the bathyscaphe by Auguste Piccard dispelled these doubts. His son, Jacques Piccard, together with Don Walsh, descended into the bathyscaphe Trieste in Mariana Trench to a depth of over ten thousand meters. At the very bottom, the dive participants saw live fish. After this, oceanographic expeditions from many countries began to comb the ocean abyss with deep-sea nets and discover new species of animals, families, orders and even classes!
Photo oceanexplorer.noaa.gov
Bathyscaphe diving has improved. Jacques-Yves Cousteau and scientists from many countries made expensive dives to the bottom of the oceans. In the 70s, a discovery was made that changed many scientists' ideas. Near Galapagos Islands Faults were discovered at a depth of two to four thousand meters. And at the bottom, small volcanoes were discovered - hydrotherms. Sea water entering the cracks earth's crust, evaporated along with various minerals through small volcanoes up to 40 meters high. These volcanoes were called “black smokers” because the water coming out of them was black.
Photo whoi.edu
However, the most incredible thing is that in such water, filled with hydrogen sulfide, heavy metals and various toxic substances, thriving fast paced life. The temperature of the water coming out of black smokers reaches 300° C. They do not penetrate to a depth of four thousand meters Sun rays, and, therefore, there cannot be rich life. Even in shallower depths, benthic organisms are very rarely found, let alone in deep abysses. There, animals feed on organic debris that falls from above. And what more depth, the poorer the bottom life. Chemoautotrophic bacteria were found on the surfaces of black smokers, which break down sulfur compounds erupted from the depths of the planet. Bacteria cover the bottom surface with a continuous layer and live in aggressive conditions. They became food for many other animal species. In total, about 500 species of animals living in extreme conditions"black smokers"
Photo eurekalert.org
Another discovery was vestimentifera, which belongs to the class of bizarre animals - pogonophora. These are small tubes from which long tubes with tentacles protrude at the ends. The unusual thing about these animals is that they do not have digestive system! They entered into symbiosis with bacteria. Inside the vestimentifera there is an organ - the trophosome, where many sulfur bacteria live. Bacteria receive hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide for life; the excess of reproducing bacteria is eaten by the vestimentifera itself. In addition, bivalve mollusks of the genera Calyptogena and Bathymodiolus were found nearby, which also entered into symbiosis with bacteria and ceased to depend on searching for food. One of the most unusual creatures of the deep-sea hydrothermal world is the Alvinella pompeian worm. They are named because of the analogy with the eruption of the Pompeii volcano - these creatures live in a zone of hot water reaching 50 ° C, and ash from sulfur particles constantly falls on them. Worms, together with vestimentifera, form real “gardens” that provide food and shelter for many organisms. Among the colonies of vestimentifera and pompeii worms live crabs and decapods that feed on them. Also among these “gardens” there are octopuses and fish from the eelpout family. The world of black smokers also harbored long-extinct animals that were driven out of other parts of the ocean, such as the Neolepas barnacles. These animals were widespread 250 million years ago, but then became extinct. Here representatives of barnacles feel calm.
SMOKERS black and white (English black and white smokers), hydrothermal structures on the ocean floor, from the vents of which hot aqueous solutions (hydrotherms) containing suspended mineral particles pour out. From black smokers, hydrothermal solutions (temperature 350-360°C) remove mainly metal sulfides in the form of a black thick suspension. In the fluid of white smokers (temperature 150-280°C), the suspension is dominated by non-metallic minerals - barite, anhydrite, silica minerals. Up to tens of dm 3 /s of hydrothermal solutions flow from the vents of smokers. Smokers were discovered in 1977 on the East Pacific Rise by researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (USA) while diving on the deep-sea manned submersible Alvin.
There are over 100 known smokers. They are confined to active rift systems of the axial zones of mid-ocean ridges, to zones of their intersection with transform faults, to spreading areas in the rear of island arcs and areas of intra-oceanic volcanism above hot spots. The spatial localization of smokers, thermal power, the amount of incoming endogenous matter, etc. are influenced by the spreading rate and the intensity of the magmatic process. Most of known active smokers were found within the East Pacific Rise with a high (about 10 cm per year or more) spreading rate and intense magmatism. The size and morphology of smokers depend on the duration of their activity and the flow rate of the sources. The height of the largest long-term functioning black smokers with large flow rates of sources can reach 70-100 m; the diameter of the base is about 200 m. From low-temperature hydrothermal solutions from sources with low flow rates, small buildings with a height of several centimeters to several meters are formed. There are smokers in the form of pillars, towers, hills, and chimneys. Smokers are composed of polymetallic ores with a predominance of iron, copper or zinc minerals. Elements with small ionic radii (Co, Ni, etc.), rare earth elements, and noble metals (Ag, Au, Pt) were found in the ores of black smokers. There is a specific community around active smokers deep sea organisms(hydrothermal fauna; discovered in 1977 in the area of the Galapagos Islands), the creation of primary production in which is ensured mainly by chemosynthesis carried out by bacteria using the energy of reduced chemical compounds (hydrogen sulfide, thiosulfate, methane, etc.).
Smokers are genetically primarily associated with submarine basaltic volcanism and are products of complex interactions between hydrothermal solutions, seawater, and host oceanic crustal rocks. In the 1990s, Russian scientists from the Sevmorgeologiya enterprise opened new type smokers formed during the exothermic process of serpentinization of ultramafic rocks of the oceanic crust. Ancient analogues of smokers are sulfur-pyrite, copper-pyrite and copper-zinc-pyrite ores in folded belts (see Cypriot and Ural subclasses in the article Hydrothermal deposits).
The discovery of smokers is of great importance for studying the flow of thermal endogenous energy in geophysics, the composition of sea water in chemistry, the study of the subsurface biosphere, the conditions for the origin of life on Earth and chemosynthesis processes in biology, and the analysis of metallogenic features of the ocean in geology. The wide distribution of smokers on the ocean floor and the high content of ore components in them make it possible to classify them as pyrite deposits of the future.
Lit.: Hydrothermal vents and processes. L., 1995; Van Dover S. L. The ecology of deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Princeton, 2000; Hydrothermal ore genesis of the ocean floor. M., 2006.
Yes, and the promised clip script! thank you nach_berlin -- for the link (wow) UPD: nach_berlin restoration of justice :-) first found the link inger02 ! :-) Olga Gushchina: Let's come up with clips. Lesopoval's song "Dovecote".
- Barracks surrounded by a barbed wire fence. There is snow all around. It's lightly dawning.
- Then - the scene is already inside the barracks. Prisoners sleep on multi-tiered bunks. One of them, a young man, stands at the window and looks into the distance through the bars with a sad look. After the musical introduction with the beginning of the first verse, a dreamy smile appears on his face. He sees the faded sun rising from behind the tops of the fir trees growing behind the fence. There are tears in the guy's eyes. He moves away from the window, takes a piece of paper and a pen, sits down on the bunk and begins to write.
- Another scene: early morning in the Moscow region. A girl comes out of a small private house and heads to the dovecote located behind the house. She starts pouring food for the pigeons. One of the birds lands on her hand, and the girl, smiling, strokes it. A guy creeps up behind her and covers her eyes with his palms. The girl laughs and removes his palms. She turns to him and the young people kiss. Then he takes her hand and they walk through the garden. The postman is knocking on the gate. The girl opens it for him and takes the envelope from his hands. Having closed the gate, she immediately opens this envelope and begins to read.
- Close-up: a piece of paper written on. The sentence is clearly visible: “And here we are almost at the end of the Earth... It would be more pleasant for me to be closer to you...” The guy comes up from behind, runs his eyes over the lines, snatches the letter from her hands and tears it up.
- After the second verse, there is another scene in prison: a young man sits on a bunk and holds in his hands black and white photograph, where he is depicted with the same girl against the backdrop of a dovecote. The photo gets closer and closer and finally takes up the entire screen and “comes to life.” Black and white scene: the young man and girl depicted in the photograph emerge from her yard and, holding hands, walk along a small street and then through a field of daisies. The girl smiles playfully and begins to run away from the guy. He catches up with her and, having caught her, picks her up and kisses her. Both look happy. During the instrumental passage before the chorus repeats, the figures of the young people become smaller and smaller and, in the end, only black dot against the background of the field. The image becomes vague, and now only the photograph is visible again - first across the entire screen, and then further and further. Color appears again.
- A guard enters the cell and the prisoners approach him for letters. The young man also rises from his bunk and stands in the crowd. Having received the letters, the prisoners leave satisfied. The crowd disperses. The young man looks at the guard with hope in his eyes, but he spreads his hands, shakes his head and leaves.
- During the final musical passage, the girl is shown again. She sits in her house desk and in neat handwriting writes something on a piece of paper. Close-up: a piece of paper where the following is clearly visible: “I fell in love with someone else. Forgive me! Forget me!”
Kamchatka. night.
- on the left is a gray-gray sea, on the right is a gray-gray swamp. behind him, on the horizon, are mountains. between them there is a surfacing. The sea with the lambs is kind of stormy.
- A hurricane is driving along the surf (this is such a hefty multi-wheeled mandula with two cabins - the kind of rockets they used to carry around Red Square at parades). gear and boxes dangle between the cabins.
- V the opposite side according to the same surf - a frog (armored personnel carrier? bmp? h.z.).
- there, on the surf, there is a castric, and all sorts of things are lying around - nets, a boat motor, etc. An old karyak is sorting through the gill net. (or there - he ties the kukhtyli to it, it probably won’t be possible to repair the net in this light)
- in the tower the border guard looks at the frog, from behind the frog’s canopy a young karak looks at him. both smoke.
- inside the frog there are two more karyaks - sleeping as much as possible with such shaking
- A man walks waist-deep in water, selects a croaker from a net, and throws it into the boat. A little further away dog heads stick out of the water - these are seals.
- there is a tanker in the roadstead. spotlights, illuminated deck. Vorkug blackness and drizzle. There are two people in the cabin. strong excitement.
- The tanker has a boat and a pontoon, and a stream of fuel oil flows into the neck. The stevedore poured fuel oil into a jar and looked at how much water there was.
- At the same time, a container is lowered onto the dinghy, a rather risky undertaking, because the boat, still empty, is riding the waves.
- The stevedore opens it, looks at the boxes, then climbs back onto the tanker and in the wheelhouse settles with the assistant - in cash, and drinks half a glass of cognac.
- A boat is pulling a dinghy along the river. There’s one drunken little guy lying on the boat, and another in the boat’s wheelhouse. the boat is chatting - the stevedore is vomiting.
- a man in a punt, when he sees the headlights of a hurricane on the surf, collects the net, pulls the starter several times, rushes towards the fire parallel to the surf.
- the boat also turns towards the fire.
- and the frog - there too, sleepy men fall out of it and reload the boxes from the container to the hurricane and from the hurricane to the dinghy.
- The stevedore from the boat and the hurricane driver are calculating something on pieces of paper.
- poachers in general, and/or smugglers.
- The border guard from the tower goes to crucify his superiors.
- The boss is calling somewhere.
- The border guard goes to wake up the motorists of the border boat (just MRS?).
- border guards moor to the tanker,
- several sleepy people with machine guns climb on board,
- The boat is removed and floats away into the fog.
- ......
In science, it has long been believed that living organisms can exist only from the energy of the Sun. Jules Verne, in his novel Journey to the Center of the Earth, described an underground world with dinosaurs and ancient plants. However, this is fiction. But who would have thought that there would be a world isolated from the energy of the Sun with absolutely different living organisms. And he was found at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
In the 70s, a discovery was made that changed many scientists' ideas. Near the Galapagos Islands, faults were discovered at a depth of two to four thousand meters. And at the bottom, small volcanoes were discovered - hydrotherms. Sea water, falling into fractures in the earth's crust, evaporated along with various minerals through small volcanoes up to 40 meters high. These volcanoes were called “black smokers” because the water coming out of them was black.
 |  |
Hydrothermal vents at mid-ocean ridges(also known as "black smokers"black smoker) - numerous sources operating on the ocean floor, confined to the axial parts of mid-ocean ridges. From them, highly mineralized hot water under pressure of hundreds of atmospheres enters the oceans. They are pipe-shaped formations reaching a height of tens of meters, the stability of which is ensured by the reduced effect of gravity under water.
General information
Hydrothermal ocean vents carry dissolved elements from the oceanic crust into the oceans, changing the crust and making very significant contributions to the chemistry of the oceans. Together with the cycle of generation of oceanic crust at oceanic ridges and its recycling into the mantle, hydrothermal alteration represents a two-stage system for the transfer of elements between the mantle and the oceans. The oceanic crust recycled into the mantle is apparently responsible for some of the mantle heterogeneities.
Oases of life
Hydrothermal springs are a kind of “oases of life” in the deep aphotic zone of the ocean, existing not on the basis of photosynthesis, but on the chemosynthesis of chemosynthetic bacteria. This is the habitat of unusual biological communities ensuring the formation of independent ecosystems. Thus, the deepest parts of the biosphere are confined to them, reaching depths of 2500 meters or more.
Contribution to the Earth's heat balance
Hydrothermal vents make a significant contribution to the Earth's heat balance. Under the median ridges, the mantle comes closest to the surface. Sea water penetrates through cracks into the oceanic crust to a considerable depth, due to thermal conductivity it is heated by mantle heat and concentrated in magma chambers. Further, the internal pressure of superheated water in the chambers leads to the release of highly mineralized jets from sources at the bottom.
Their total contribution to the heat balance of the Earth is about 20% of the total geothermal heat released - annually black smokers spew out about 3 10 9 tons of highly mineralized water heated to 350 ° C, and about 6 10 11 tons from low-temperature sources (above 20 ° C ).
Notes
- Along with “black smokers,” there are also “white smokers,” which emit lighter-colored solutions and suspensions of minerals containing large quantities barium, silicon and calcium. And also - "gray smokers" They differ in the chemical composition and temperature of the “smoke”: the coldest are white smokers (up to +200°C), the temperature of gray smokers is up to +300°C. Smokers at the bottom of oceans and seas create unique conditions for unique life, whose “oases” are found in the very heart of the oceans - literally in the abyss of the sea.
- The deepest smokers discovered are located at a depth of 5000 m in the Cayman Trench
Life in black smokers
We already know what a black smoker is like. At the bottom of the ocean in the rift valleys of the mid-ocean ridges, jets of very hot water burst out under pressure through the thickness of the crust. This is the water that penetrated through cracks into the oceanic lithosphere and there heated up to 300–400 degrees due to volcanic heat. Along the way, a lot of hydrogen sulfide, sulfides and metal oxides dissolved in it, the solid particles of which, falling out when the water cools, give it a black color. Therefore, the jets of water escaping from the lithosphere resemble clouds of black smoke, which is why they got their name. Gradually, during the cooling process, solid particles settle and form conical pipes around the water fountains. Their height reaches several tens of meters. The landscape resembles a huge factory on the ocean floor, with black smoke pouring out of its many chimneys.
From above, jets escape from the chimney of a black smoker black water, whose temperature reaches 350℃. Below on the sulfide ore structure there are bacterial mats, and closer to the base of the pipe there is a colony of vestimentifera. Large bivalves live at the foot of the pipe.
Serious research into black smokers became possible only after the creation of special deep-sea guided vehicles. Miniature submarines allowed researchers to dive to depths of several thousand meters, see the bottom with their own eyes and collect soil samples using mechanical manipulators. And then a surprise awaited the oceanographers: real oases with rich fauna were found in rift zones at great depths. Typically, at great ocean depths, where sunlight never penetrates, the number and biomass of animals is very small. And rift zones, with their hot volcanic gases and high concentrations of toxic chemical compounds, even more so, it seemed, should be valleys of death among the sea depths that are not too rich in life. However, the very first photographs taken by researchers through the windows of underwater vehicles showed a colossal abundance of living creatures around the smokers. Together they form an integral hierarchical ecosystem around the smoker, in which different species of animals are interconnected by a food chain. At the very top of the smoker's chimney, the temperature is approximately 350–200 degrees. Almost no one lives there.
Bacteria live lower down, where the pipe walls are 4–6 cm thick and the temperature is 100–120 degrees. Tangles of billions of bacterial cells, which, oddly enough, can survive at such high temperatures, form so-called mats or pillows with an area of up to several square meters and a thickness of several centimeters.
Below, at temperatures of 50–80 degrees, bacteria are replaced by Pompeii worms. These are the only animals on Earth that can survive at such high temperatures. The body of the worm is located in a tube and is about 12 centimeters long. They are colored bright red, which is due to the excessively high content of hemoglobin in their blood. Scientists called them Pompeii worms because, like the inhabitants of ancient Pompeii in Italy, they live on the edge of a volcano that could destroy them at any moment. The smoker's "ash" is constantly falling on top of them. And among the Pompeian worms crawl small annelids, which look for empty tubes abandoned by their owners in order to settle in them.
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Rice. 2. Pompeian worm.
The Pompeian worm, living on the wall of a black smoker, is a very perfect and highly organized creature. Photo from the site: http://ru.abfs.lv/tm/black-smokers
Even lower, at a distance from the mouth of the smoker, where the temperature drops below 40 degrees, plexuses of white tubes of giant (up to 2.5 m) worms with bright scarlet tentacles are visible. These worms live in chitinous or protein tubes, which are attached at the bottom to the surface of the smoker's pipe. Their scarlet tentacles, filled with blood, hang from above like a beard. Hence the name of this type of worm: pogonophora - bearing a beard. And the variety of pogonophora discovered on black smokers was called vestimentifera.
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Rice. 3. Vestimentifera.
Vestimentifera are autotrophic animals - a recently discovered class of the pogonophora type.
Further, the space around the smoker's pipe for several tens of meters is inhabited by huge bivalves 30–40 centimeters long. Thousands of white crabs and blind crayfish, millions of shrimp, etc. crawl between the mollusks and in the thickets of pipes. In total, about 500 different species of animals have been discovered, and for 80% of them there are no analogues on the surface of the ocean.
Rice. 4. Giant bivalves.
At the top of the ecological pyramid of smokers are predators - deep-sea octopuses and predatory fish Termarzes (hellish Cerberus). Slowly and steadily they swim around looking for crabs or shrimp for lunch.
 |
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Rice. 5. Thermarces Cerberus (hellish Cerberus) - Thermarces cerberus.
The beauty and richness of the communities of black smokers, sharply contrasting with the poor and monotonous population of the ocean floor, so amazed the researchers that some of the hydrothermal oases are called very poetically in the scientific literature: “Garden of Eden”, “Rose Garden”, etc. But a question arises : How is life maintained in these paradise gardens, where sunlight does not penetrate and which are full of substances that are poisonous from our point of view? These are hydrogen sulfide, heavy metal sulfides, carbon dioxide, etc. Their concentration in the waters of a smoker exceeds the concentration in ordinary sea water by hundreds of millions of times. For terrestrial organisms and those that live in the ocean in the surface layer, this would be fatal. And the animals of smokers survive calmly in such an environment. Let's add to this the high temperatures and ultra-high pressures that reign in the depths of the ocean. Now scientists already know the answer to this question.
It turned out that the basis of life in smokers is bacteria. These bacteria are not quite ordinary. They themselves live by absorbing hydrogen sulfide from water and processing it chemically. These chemical reactions release energy, just as heat is released when fuel burns. Then, with the help of this energy, bacteria synthesize nutritious organic substances from carbon dioxide and water, just as plants do in terrestrial communities. Only plants do not use chemical energy for this, but the radiant energy of the sun. The process of formation of nutrient organic substances in the green parts of plants from carbon dioxide and water with the help of solar energy is called photosynthesis. In contrast, the method of synthesis of organic nutrients by bacteria using the energy of chemical reactions is called chemosynthesis. These nutrients primarily support the life of the bacteria themselves. Then other, larger and more highly organized members of the community feed on the bacteria.
Of course, not all hydrothermal inhabitants feed directly on bacteria. The system is more complex: there are only a few of these types. In the Pacific Ocean these are vestimentifera and various species of bivalves. Rimikaris shrimp are common in the Atlantic. They lack ordinary eyes, but they have developed a special organ - thermal eyes - that operate in the infrared range and allow them to see streams of boiling water.
Rice. 6. Accumulation of shrimp. When magnified, white thermal eyes are visible.
What is happening in the Indian Ocean is not yet entirely clear, because the first hydrothermal fields have literally just been found there, but there are also rimikaris on them.
Of course, it is inconvenient for all these species to simply collect bacteria, because although there are a lot of bacteria at hydrotherms, they are not always and not everywhere. Therefore, it is safer to cultivate them yourself somewhere at hand. Namely - on or in your own body. Bivalves breed bacteria in their gills. Rimikaris shrimp grow bacterial gardens directly on their own oral limbs and scrape them into their mouths as needed. This is a difficult matter: bacteria need the maximum concentration of any chemical, and this is where the jets of hydrothermal fluid are not yet diluted with bottom water. And therefore very, very hot. Shrimps crawl into the blackest smoke to graze their bacteria, balancing on a fine line: get too close and you get cooked, not close enough and you sit there hungry. Therefore, among the Rimikaris, every now and then you come across individuals with burnt legs and antennae. Here it is important how well the thermal eyes of these animals “see”.
But the vestimentifers were the most cunning of all. When studying them, it was discovered that as adults they have neither a mouth nor an intestine. How do they eat? It turned out that vestimentiferans have a special organ in the body - a “trophosome”.
Rice. 7. Dissected vestimentifera.
Electron microscopic studies have shown that large trophosome cells contain billions of bacteria. It turns out that vestimentiferans grow bacteria right inside their bodies.
How do hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide, necessary for feeding bacteria, get deep into the body of vestimentifera? It turned out that both substances are transported by the vestimentifera circulatory system, which contains two capillary systems: one in the tentacles and the other in the trophosome. With the help of blood vessels, the host organism absorbs hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide from water and delivers it to bacteria, as well as the oxygen necessary for respiration. Bacteria, protected inside the host’s body from adverse effects, receive hydrogen sulfide and oxygen from it. The host from time to time eats part of the continuously multiplying bacteria. With bacteria, it receives organic substances, which serve as the only source of nutrition for the vestimentifera. Thus, the cohabitation of bacteria and vestimentifera is a mutually beneficial symbiosis.
But vestimentifers are not born like this right away. A study of vestimentifera eggs showed that there are no bacteria in them and, therefore, bacteria are not transmitted from mother to offspring. Where do the bacteria that live in the vestimentiferal trophosome cells come from? The answer to this question was obtained by studying the larval development of vestimentifera. It turned out that their larvae have a normally developed mouth and intestines. For several days they swim in the water column with the help of a corolla of cilia, then they descend to the substrate and crawl along the surface of the ground. The larvae ingest chemosynthesizing bacteria from the external environment and become infected with them, after which the digestive organs of young vestimentifera die off, and the intestine turns into an organ of bacterial nutrition - a trophosome.
So it turns out that the main characters, due to which life is maintained in black smokers, are precisely the tiny worker bacteria.
A story by Dr. Susan Humphris about hydrothermal fluids on the ocean floor, how they form and why study them.
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