Life Around Hydrothermal Vents

Seawater seeps through cracks in the ocean crust, heats up and reacts with rocks, then emerges from hydrothermal vents on the seafloor. The communities around them can have food webs based on bacteria and archaea that obtain energy from chemical reactions rather than sunlight. Tubeworms, mollusks, shrimp, and crabs live nearby. The illustration is a synthetic AI visualization.