An amazing new wonderland has been discovered hidden deep beneath the ocean waves beyond the Arctic Circle.
Off the coast of Svalbard, Norway, more than 3,000 meters (9,842 feet) down, a field of hydrothermal vents develops along the Knipovich Ridge, an underwater mountain range previously thought to be quite unremarkable.
Instead, like underfloor heating, volcanic activity beneath the sea floor causes heat to seep out, creating a haven of heat and chemical reactions where life can gather and thrive.
The field, which measures at least a kilometer long and 200 meters wide, was named Jøtul, after the giants of Norse mythology who live under the mountains. In this case, the giant is the internal processes of the Earth, which are released through cracks in the sea floor.
“Water penetrates the ocean floor, where it is heated by magma. The superheated water then rises back to the sea floor through cracks and fissures,” explains marine geologist Gerhard Bohrmann of the University of Bremen in Germany.
“On its way up, the fluid is enriched with minerals and materials dissolved from the rocks of the oceanic crust. These fluids often re-seep on the sea floor through pipe-like chimneys called black smokers, where metal-rich minerals are then precipitated.”
Hydrothermal vent fields are some of the most interesting underwater environments. They are usually very deep below the surface of the ocean, so deep that light from the Sun cannot penetrate the vast volume of water above them.
At these depths, conditions are permanently dark, freezing, and surrounded by crushing pressures.
This environment is not exactly conducive to life, but the hydrothermal vents act as special oases. The minerals that seep out and dissolve in the water provide the basis for a food web that depends not on photosynthesis, as most life does closer to the surface, but on chemosynthesis—using chemical reactions for energy, rather than sunlight.
These environments create a much more dynamic and thriving deep seafloor than might be expected, giving us a glimpse of how life might emerge on worlds very different from our own.
Finding hydrothermal vents is also important to efforts to protect Earth’s biodiversity and learn more about how it works, as well as understanding how the planet itself works and changes over time.
The Jøtul field is located right on the border between the Earth’s two tectonic plates, on the so-called slowly spreading ridge. The plates move away from each other very slowly, causing the crust to stretch and valleys and ridges to develop.
Scientists have noted hydrothermal activity along almost all ridges north of Iceland, but the Knipovich Ridge has remained an obvious exception.
That was until 2022. Scientists saw signs of hydrothermal chemistry in the area, so they took a submersible remotely operated vehicle to the ridge to see if they could find its source.
They drove MARUM-QUEST she dived more than 3 kilometers to the seabed, where she took pictures and took water samples. And there they found the Jøtul Field – a large area of ​​seafloor with both extinct and active hydrothermal vents and a shimmer of volcanic heat seeping into the water.
It’s a wonderful find that fills a significant and previously mysterious gap in the hydrothermal distribution of the Norse-Greenland Sea.
“The Jøtul hydrothermal field is the first to be discovered along the 500-kilometer ultra-slow-spreading Knipovich Ridge and is significant because it represents a new connection between the active Loki Castle hydrothermal systems in the Mohns Bend and Knipovich Ridges and the Aurora hydrothermal field in the Gakkel Ridge,” the researchers write in his article.
“Since these systems are separated by a distance of more than 1,000 kilometers, the discovery of the Jøtul hydrothermal field is important for understanding the distribution of chemosynthetic fauna.”
In addition, the new discovery may help provide insight into the chemistry of the oceans and how the waters that clothe our world help circulate and distribute material such as carbon.
The research was published in Scientific reports.