On the last day of a research cruise off the coast of Antarctica this spring, Hamilton College marine geologist Eugene Domack and his team lowered a video camera overboard to capture images of the seafloor sediments they had been studying. They didn’t look at the tape until they were heading home, but when they did they were surprised to see a thriving community. Beneath half a mile of frigid ocean water, at the bottom of a deep trough that never sees the light of day, lay a chiaroscuro world of grayish bacteria and giant brilliant white clams.
Most of the life the team found on the videotape was huddled around three-foot-tall mud volcanoes shaped like Hershey’s Kisses. Dozens of foot-long clams crowd the volcanoes’ flanks, Domack says, and everywhere in between grows a pustular, thin white mat of bacteria. Cut off from sunlight or any outside food sources for 10,000 ...
