By Sid Perkins
From Washington, D.C., at the American Geophysical Union meeting
When scientists last month tried to revisit an undersea hydrothermal vent that was first discovered nearly a quarter of a century ago, they were in for a shock. Instead of finding a thriving ecosystem nourished by warm, mineral-rich waters spewing from the ocean floor, the researchers came across a desolate, almost lifeless place.
This hydrothermal site is one of a group of such venues discovered under more than 2,400 meters of water about 400 kilometers northeast of the Galpagos Islands. Scientists nicknamed this particular vent the Rose Garden when they found it in 1979 because of the 2-m-tall, red-tipped tubeworms surrounding the seafloor springs.