It wasn’t until the 1970s that we learned about ocean life and how environments on the bottom support big animals. The person who helped find the Titanic, Robert Ballard, says that experts didn’t know that there were big animals at the ocean floor and that the ocean could support bigger ecosystems than they thought.
Angus was the first robotic vehicle to be sent to the bottom of the ocean. It was packed in a steel cage and had a camera system and strobe lights. They were looking into the mid-ocean ridge, which was the world’s longest mountain range at the time. They went to the hill to find heat vents, but they didn’t expect to find a lot of different kinds of life there.
Before it came back to the surface, Angus explored the depths for twelve hours and took pictures. When they looked at the pictures again, they saw that the water started to get warmer about 2,500 feet below. At this point, Angus’ pictures showed three-meter-tall tube worms and clams the size of plates.
Scientists were shocked to find life at this depth. It made them wonder what other kinds of life might be deeper down and what kinds of life might be in other parts of the solar system.
Angus saw clams in the ocean the day after the trip. Three people went down into the water and took pictures of them. They brought the clams to the top to find out how they worked. When they opened the clams, they saw that they were full of blood that looked like human blood and were bigger than mussels.
The clam did not have any cells inside its body. Instead, it was fed by a bacteria that lived inside it. Hydrogen sulfide was found in the water, which was making a hot spring that brought life to the area.
Robert Ballard says that this expedition changed the idea that living things could only live in a certain pH range and made people wonder what other kinds of life might be out there…or down there.
