By Sid Perkins
PORTLAND, Ore. — Field studies at a hydrothermal vent system where all life was snuffed out by a massive undersea volcanic eruption reveal that these habitats can be repopulated in a matter of months by larvae from distant vents.
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In late 2005 and early 2006, a swarm of earthquakes rocked a 15-kilometer-long portion of the East Pacific Rise, a deep submarine ridge south-southwest of Acapulco, Mexico. That portion of the rise, which in turn is part of a network of mid-ocean ridges that encircle the globe, hosts hydrothermal vent systems that many researchers have long studied.
When scientists returned to the area four months after the quakes, cameras sent to the seafloor revealed that a volcanic eruption had smothered spots as far as two kilometers from the ridge with lava. “All of the organisms in the region were eradicated,” said Lauren Mullineaux, a biological oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. That devastation provided a natural laboratory to see how long it would take for organisms to recolonize the vent systems, she explained in a February 25 presentation at the American Geophysical Union’s Ocean Sciences meeting.