During their research expedition in the Caribbean, a team from the National Oceanographic Research Centre at the University of Southampton has discovered the world’s deepest known undersea volcanic vents, in the Cayman Trough.
What are believed to be the world’s deepest undersea volcanic vents have been discovered in the Caribbean.
The vents, known as black smokers, were located 5,000m (3.1 miles) down in the Cayman Trough. The volcanic chimneys, which spew out water hot enough to melt lead, were caught on film by a British-led team.
Expedition leader Dr Jon Copley said: “Seeing the world’s deepest black-smoker vents looming out of the darkness was awe-inspiring.”
He added: “Super-heated water was gushing out of their two-storey-high mineral spires, more than three miles beneath the waves.”
The BBC has more on the story, including a discussion of possibilities for the exploitation (and destruction), via deep-sea mining, of these little-known marine environments.
You can also read more about the discovery at PhysOrg.com, check Wikipedia to find out what the Cayman Trough is (“a complex transform fault zone pull apart basin which contains a small spreading ridge on the floor of the western Caribbean Sea between Jamaica and the Cayman Islands”), and follow the research team’s work via their regularly updated expedition website.
Edited to add a bit of trivia from this TimesOnline report on the discovery: the Cayman Trough was the setting for the 1989 science fiction film The Abyss.
