Hydrothermal Groupies

When undersea volcanic eruptions destroy life at hydrothermal vents—the intersections of tectonic plates—new species travel from as far as 200 miles away to repopulate the area. “We don’t understand how they get from one vent to another,” biological oceanographer Lauren Mullineaux said. “But because we now see that they can move these long distances, it expands the scale of connectedness between different vents.”