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My understanding of how undersea vents work is that they're constantly shifting with any given vent only lasting a few years before drying up while new vents ar
by Symmetry 7y ago
My understanding of how undersea vents work is that they're constantly shifting with any given vent only lasting a few years before drying up while new vents are constantly forming. There are a lot of important ecological concerns around this, for instance if processing at sea surface dumps silt back into the water that could cover animals deep in the sea or interfere with krill eaters. But I'm not sure the destruction of the vents themselves is a huge issue provided we aren't too rapacious.
- catalogia 7y agoHow long does any particular region of vents last? If these active geological phenomena are anything like volcanos, some of them might well last for millions of years, which is plenty long for biological evolution. I'm not sure if this is the case, but it seems to me it could be the case that some vent regions are isolated from others, such that life adapted to one cannot find it's way to another. This is certainly the case with many species of troglofauna (cave dwelling creatures.) Destroying one group of ocean vents may wipe out numerous species of life that exist nowhere else.