Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • News & Views
  • Published:

Oceanography

Vents at higher frequency

Nature volume 395, pages 437–439 (1998)Cite this article

The deep-ocean research community is a small one, but the rate at which central dogmas are toppled must be one of the highest in science. Because of the relative inaccessibility of the abyssal environment, general ideas about deep-ocean processes are often advanced on the basis of only a few local or regional observations. As access to the sea floor increases with developing technologies and oceanographic infrastructures, the science becomes ever more volatile and exciting. An example of work that causes us to think again comes in the paper by German et al. on page 490 of this issue1 — there the authors provide remote-sensing data that challenge the current model correlating frequency of hydrothermal vents with the spreading rate of mid-ocean ridges.

When hydrothermal vents were first discovered along submarine mountain ranges in the eastern Pacific, geologists pointed to the obvious link between these hot springs and volcanism. The ensuing searches for vents concentrated on thermally swollen crust of local topographic highs along the mid-ocean ridge axes. The first vents were found on fast-spreading centres — the East Pacific Rise and Galapagos rift — where the ocean plates move apart at spreading rates of 50-80 mm yr−1. At the time, many scientists expressed doubt that hydrothermal activity could be supported on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where spreading is much slower (20-40 mm yr−1) and the thermal and volcanic budget is considerably lower. Peter Rona and his colleagues proved this idea wrong in the mid-1980s with the discovery of the so-called TAG site2, which still ranks as one of the largest and most persistent hydrothermal sites yet discovered on the sea floor.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Incidence of hydrothermal plumes plotted against spreading rate of ocean ridges, where plume incidence is the percentage of ridge-axis length that is overlain by significant plume anomalies in the water column.

References

  1. German, C. R., Baker, E. T., Mevel C., Tamaki K., & the FUJI Science Teeam Nature 395, 490–493 (1998).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Rona, P. A., Klinkhammer, G., Nelsen, T. A., Trefry, J. H. & Elderfield, H. Nature 321, 33–37 (1986).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Baker, E. T., Chen, Y. J. & Morgan, J. P. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 142, 137–145 (1996).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Baker, E. T., German, C. R. & Elderfield, H. in Seafloor Hydrothermal Systems: Physical, Chemical, Biological and Geological Interactions (eds Humphris, S. et al.) 47-71 (Am. Geophys. Un, Washington DC, 1995).

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. the Department of Biology, Millington Hall, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, 23185, Virginia, USA

    Cindy Lee Van Dover

Authors
  1. Cindy Lee Van Dover
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Van Dover, C. Vents at higher frequency. Nature 395, 437–439 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/26617

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/26617

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing