The deep sea is intense.
Earlier in 2020, a robotic ocean explorer launched by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution captured a wild event along a mountainous ridge in the Caribbean Sea, called the Cayman Rise.
Scientists drove the hi-tech robot, Jason, to a hydrothermal vent pumping out hot, mineral-rich water. Swarms of deep sea shrimp crawled around the vent, as they devoured microbes living off the vent’s nutrients.
As Jason filmed the deep ocean scene, a moderate 4.7 quake hit some 100 miles away. The shrimp promptly reacted to the shaking by swarming off the vent en mass. The quake hits at the 35-second mark in the video above.
The deep sea is still a largely unexplored realm, with untold secrets. We have better maps of the moon’s surface than we do of the ocean floor.
