Diverse styles of submarine venting on the ultraslow spreading Mid-Cayman Rise
- aWoods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543;
- bNational Aeronautics and Space Administration Astrobiology Institute and Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109;
- cDuke University Marine Laboratory, Beaufort, NC 28516;
- dMarine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA 02543;
- eAustralian Centre for Field Robotics, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia;
- fInstitut des Sciences de la Terre de Paris, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Unité Mixte de Recherche 7193, Paris, France;
- gCentre National de la Recherche Scientifique—GéoAzur, Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis, Valbonne, France;
- hNational Institute of Advanced Science and Technology, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8567, Japan; and
- iLaboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218-2681
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Communicated by Stanley R. Hart, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, June 28, 2010 (received for review May 24, 2010)

Abstract
Thirty years after the first discovery of high-temperature submarine venting, the vast majority of the global mid-ocean ridge remains unexplored for hydrothermal activity. Of particular interest are the world’s ultraslow spreading ridges that were the last to be demonstrated to host high-temperature venting but may host systems particularly relevant to prebiotic chemistry and the origins of life. Here we report evidence for previously unknown, diverse, and very deep hydrothermal vents along the ∼110 km long, ultraslow spreading Mid-Cayman Rise (MCR). Our data indicate that the MCR hosts at least three discrete hydrothermal sites, each representing a different type of water-rock interaction, including both mafic and ultramafic systems and, at ∼5,000 m, the deepest known hydrothermal vent. Although submarine hydrothermal circulation, in which seawater percolates through and reacts with host lithologies, occurs on all mid-ocean ridges, the diversity of vent types identified here and their relative geographic isolation make the MCR unique in the oceans. These new sites offer prospects for an expanded range of vent-fluid compositions, varieties of abiotic organic chemical synthesis and extremophile microorganisms, and unparalleled faunal biodiversity—all in close proximity.
Footnotes
- 1To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: cgerman{at}whoi.edu.
Author contributions: C.R.G., A.B., M.L.C., J.A.H., S.L., B.M.d.L., J.S., C.L.V.D., L.L.W., and D.R.Y. designed research; C.R.G., A.B., M.L.C., D.L.H., J.A.H., M.V.J., J.C.K., M.D.K., J.M.M., K.-i.N., J.S., J.L.S., S.P.S., C.L.V.D., L.L.W., and D.R.Y. performed research; A.B., J.A.H., M.V.J., J.C.K., M.D.K., S.L., J.M.M., B.M.d.L., K.-i.N., J.S., J.L.S., S.P.S., L.L.W., and D.R.Y. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; C.R.G., A.B., M.L.C., D.L.H., J.A.H., M.V.J., J.C.K., M.D.K., S.L., J.M.M., B.M.d.L., K.-i.N., J.S., J.L.S., S.P.S., C.L.V.D., L.L.W., and D.R.Y. analyzed data; and C.R.G., M.L.C., J.A.H., M.D.K., J.S., J.L.S., and C.L.V.D. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Data deposition: Microbiological sequences have been deposited in the VAMPS database, https://vamps.mbl.edu (Dataset BPC_CH_V6V4).
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1009205107/-/DCSupplemental.
Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.
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