Image

Mapping Vents

January 10, 2015

Hydrothermal vents are not nearly as rare as initially thought when they were first discovered in 1977. Since then, scientists have come to better understand the conditions that create the wide variety of hot springs that gush and seep fluids from the seafloor. In 2014, WHOI biologist Stace Beaulieu worked with staff at the Ocean Explorium in New Bedford, Mass., to create videos for the Science on a Sphere system installed in museums and aquaria around the world that included this map of known hydrothermal vent sites in relation to spreading (red), transform (green), and subduction faults (purple). (Image courtesy of Stace Beaulieu, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)