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Bouquet of Tubeworms

Fish swim amid this vibrant community of tubeworms around hydrothermal vents on the seafloor near the East Pacific Rise. The fish are zoarcids—predators that eat tubeworms, crabs, and other animals living around vents. All this deep-sea life relies on energy derived from chemosynthetic microbes. WHOI microbiologist Stefan Sievert led two expeditions in 2014, in January and November, to investigate these microbes and the largely unknown biochemical reactions they perform under extreme conditions at seafloor vents.(Photo courtesy of Stefan Sievert, WHOI/NSF/HOV Alvin, ©2014 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)