Oceanography Hydrothermal Vents

My topic for this paper is hydrothermal vents, I choose this topic because it is something I never knew occurred and I wanted to get a better understanding about them and some of the fascinating species that live near the vents. First, I am going to explain what hydrothermal vents are and how they are produced. Next, I am going to talk about the different kinds of appearances that hydrothermal vents can create. Finally, I will talk about what kind of plants and animals live near hydrothermal vents.

Hydrothermal vents are basically a hot spring that occurs in our oceans as apposed to on land. These vents are on the sea floor along the Mid Ocean Ridges where there are special cracks, which happen to be above an underground magma chamber (Thurman, Trujillo pg. 90). Hydrothermal vents are created through the movement of sea floor spreading that creates cracks and fissures. Cold seawater will flow down the cracks in the ocean crust and toward the magma chambers about 2 to 3 km below the crust. The water is heated up due to how close it is to the magma chamber and then will expand due to heat and then rises back up because hot water is less dense then cold water. The water is then released back through the ocean crust where it escapes through hydrothermal vents (Beauregard pg. 1).

Beauregard says, "During the water's journey through the crust, it releases some of its dissolved ions (like salts), dissolves some of the existing minerals, and leaches out metals from the rocks it encounters" (Beauregard pg. 1). Near the magma chamber the heat dissolves more materials and as the water rises it brings these materials back up to the surface while catching more materials that are dissolving at a slower pace due to the water cooling (Beauregard pg. 1). The dissolved materials usually come out of some sort of precipitate, which turns them into solids, and they will create mineral deposits on the nearby rocks (Thurman, Trujillo pg. 91).

There are three distinct appearances that hydrothermal vents can create and they are generally classified into different groups based on the temperature they emit. The three types of appearances are warm-water vents, white smokers and black smokers. The first type of hydrothermal vent is called a Warm-water vent; these vents have a temperature that is below 86 degrees Fahrenheit. Warm-water vents are the least intense of the three vents and most often emit water that is clear in color (Trujillo, Thurman pg. 91). Humans can survive in this temperature and it is possible for someone to not even know that they are near one.

Trujillo and Thurman classify the next group of vents as white smokers and they have temperatures that range from 86 to 662 degrees Fahrenheit (Thurman, Trujillo pg. 91). White smokers contain compounds of barium, calcium and silicon and have the middle temperature of the hydrothermal vents. With these temperatures being more extreme than warm-water