{"id":22933,"date":"2019-07-03T17:00:58","date_gmt":"2019-07-03T15:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/?p=22933"},"modified":"2021-12-01T13:50:11","modified_gmt":"2021-12-01T12:50:11","slug":"did-life-begin-in-the-deep-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/story\/22933\/did-life-begin-in-the-deep-sea\/","title":{"rendered":"Did life on Earth begin in the deep sea?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When it comes to being otherworldly, alien, and bizarre, the ocean has plenty to fuel the imagination and make your jaw drop: giant scuttling bugs<\/a>, jelly-like blobfish, slimy mucus-drenched hagfish<\/a>, hairy armed lobsters<\/a>, and almost anything else you could imagine.<\/p>\n\n

It\u2019s no big surprise that Hollywood science fiction films so often look to the deep for their monsters, landscapes and mystery. After all, the deep ocean is more alien to us than the surface of the moon.<\/p>\n\n

But bizarrely, some scientists think the ocean floor might well be the very place where life on our planet first evolved.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Discovery of hydrothermal vents<\/b><\/h4>\n\n

One of the hottest candidates for creating the right conditions are deep sea ‘hydrothermal’<\/a> vents, where super-heated water and chemicals meet. These vents exist far below the reach of sunlight, in an area devoid of any oxygen. They\u2019re created at the places where giant tectonic plates meet, by the heat from the inner earth pushing through the crust of the planet.<\/p>\n\n

Hydrothermal vents were only discovered in 1977 \u2013 and astonished scientists with their towering chimneys, and bizarre animals discovered around them. Giant tube worms<\/a>, bacteria-eating crabs, and other surreal creatures somehow thriving at great depths, clustered around columns billowing out ‘smoking’<\/a> superheated, mineral-rich seawater.<\/p>\n\n

This discovery challenged what people thought about life on earth, and even more so when \u2018alkaline\u2019 versions were discovered in 2000. Caustic conditions<\/a>, similar to weak bleach, or bicarbonate of soda, seemed even more unlikely to support life. Yet they did.<\/p>\n\n

The Lost City: the real primordial soup?<\/b><\/h4>\n\n

The Lost City is the best known of these hydrothermal vents \u2013 a collection of turrets, towers and chimneys that could be as much as 120,000 years old.<\/p>\n\n

Research shows that these vents are creating hydrocarbons<\/a> \u2013 molecules that are essential for all life on earth. Could it be that churning chemicals and minerals in superheated seawater in places like the Lost City were actually where life started<\/a>? Is this the real primordial soup?<\/p>\n\n

The honest answer is \u2013 we still don\u2019t know. In the last couple of decades, scientists have struggled to survey and understand the mysteries of the Lost City<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

But as research continues to try and answer these questions, the seabed has attracted attention from industry keen to exploit the minerals and metals down there too.<\/p>\n\n

\"Hydrothermal
Hydrothermal vents at Dom Jo\u00e3o De Castro. They are unusually shallow and support unique communities of organisms, often with special properties which interest both scientists and industry. UAC is conducting research here. The area has been designated a Natura 2000 site. \u00a9 Greenpeace \/ Gavin Newman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

Monster machines at the ready<\/b><\/h4>\n\n

We don\u2019t know very much about the deep sea, and we know even less about remote, inhospitable deep sea vents. Though they exist in extreme chemical and physical conditions, they seem to be very fragile and precarious.<\/p>\n\n

Yet even before scientists have started to scratch the surface of understanding these remarkable environments, they are at risk of being damaged or destroyed forever by industries keen to mine minerals from the deep sea.<\/p>\n\n

Licences have already been granted to explore for mining the seafloor with monster machines \u2013 which risk wrecking these places before they are even understood.<\/p>\n\n

A wake-up call <\/b><\/h4>\n\n

The rush to exploit the deep ocean, before we even understand it, has to be a wake-up call.<\/p>\n\n

It\u2019s not as if the public is clamouring for the seafloor to be ripped up for us to get a new gadget (especially when companies can\u2019t even get their act together to reclaim and recycle the materials we already have!). Not only are we threatening unique marine life, but we might destroy these places forever.<\/p>\n\n

That\u2019s why Greenpeace\u2019s Pole to Pole expedition is sailing to the Lost City with the scientist who discovered this wonder of the deep ocean, to learn more about its mysteries and make the case for protection, rather than exploitation.<\/p>\n\n

Did life on Earth begin in the cauldron of chemical soup around deep sea hydrothermal vents? I don\u2019t know. But I do know that we\u2019re already harming enough species and habitats, and we have no justifiable reason to trash the fragile deep sea and all the wonderfully weird marine life that makes its home there.<\/p>\n\n

Join Greenpeace\u2019s campaign to protect places like the Lost City, by putting the most vulnerable and important parts of our seas off-limits to destructive industries: www.greenpeace.org\/protecttheoceans<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Some scientists think the ocean floor might well be the very place where life on our planet first evolved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":23138,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_planet4_optimize_post_is_variant":false,"_planet4_optimize_experiment_name":"","_planet4_optimize_variant_name":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"p4_og_title":"","p4_og_description":"","p4_og_image":"","p4_og_image_id":"","p4_seo_canonical_url":"","p4_campaign_name":"not set","p4_local_project":"","p4_basket_name":"not set","p4_department":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[85],"p4-page-type":[59],"class_list":["post-22933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nature","tag-oceans","p4-page-type-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22933"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51224,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22933\/revisions\/51224"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22933"},{"taxonomy":"p4-page-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/p4-page-type?post=22933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}