While the Chinese are busyscouting the secure under - sea sites to pillagefor wanted metals , America ’s venerable pelagic exploration bomber , the fresh - renovatedDSV Alvin , go on to uncover scores of recondite sea life shape that scientific discipline has never even reckon . Here are just a few of the more alien animate being Alvin has arrive across in its travels .
Bathocyroe fosteri
Image : Larry Madin / WHOI
These bioluminescent ctenophores are found throughout the populace ’s ocean and are especially abundant around the Mid - Atlantic Ridge . They ’re cite after Alvin original Dudley Foster , who collected the first specimens .
Alvinella pompejana
Image : Irene Garcia - Berdeal / WHOI
These bristly abstruse - sea polychete worm , better have it away as the Pompeii Worm , are some of the dauntless organisms on the major planet . In fact , they ’re able-bodied to brook temperature that would blister any other animal — routinely bathe in waters up to 130 degrees F around the deep sea vents on which they live .
Benthoctopus sp.
Image : Bruce Strickrott / WHOI
Sometimes you have to look out your scientific discoveries , and sometimes they go in the lead and bring out themselves by attack the Alvin ’s operator arm as this octopus did at a deepness of 7,500 metrical unit . It call on out to be an entirely new metal money .
Bathymodiolus thermophilus and Riftia pachyptila
Image : WHOI
The brown mussels and red tube dirt ball seen here were some of Alvin ’s first breakthrough when researcher began search the ecologies of deep ocean vents . Rather than go through the trouble of evolving mouths or digestive system , these worms only bathe themselves in the superheated , toxic metal - laden waters and rely on colonies of symbiotic bacteria to produce the energy both organisms require to survive .
Rimicaris exoculata
double : Ifremer - Victor / Campagne Serpentine 2007
These shrimp do n’t take eye where they live — there ’s not light source down there anyway — so they went in the lead and got rid of theirs . Instead , researchers posit that the splodge of crimson pigment on their backs may somehow find the radiation generated from the cryptical ocean Mid - Atlantic outlet upon which they hold out and keep them from drift too close to the boiling water .
Kiwa hirsuta
Image : M. Segonzac ( MNHN ): facultative , Â © Ifremer / A. Fifis
Better known as the Yeti Crab , these are just one of a myriad of crab species thriving on detritus and lively fair game around hydrothermal vents .
Relicanthus daphneae
simulacrum : NOC / NERC
With tentacle top six feet in duration , these cryptic sea anemone carry the title of World ’s Largest Anemone for a brief stop last year . Then , research worker sequenced its genetic code and bring out that this animal was n’t just a raw species but represent an exclusively young order of animate being — related as closely to sea sea anemone as humans are to bears . [ WHOI ]
Science
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