Scientists have discovered species of shrimp, mussel and clam living at temperatures near boiling point three kilometers down in the equatorial Atlantic. They are unable to explain how the shrimp are able to live without being cooked on the walls of volcanic vents carrying fluids from the Earth’s core. Scientists from the Census of Marine Life, a 10-year project to catalogue the 200,000 species thought to live in the oceans, measured temperatures of 407 degrees in the fluids emerging from the hottest vent - hot enough to melt lead. Yet nearby there were shrimp and large beds of mussels and clams living exposed to pulses of water at temperatures of up to 80 degrees in a wholly dark environment, where the surrounding water is at two degrees - nearly freezing point
The scientists’ remotely operated vehicle also observed active lava flows and water actually boiling about three kilometers down. Somehow the chemistry of the shrimp and of other deep-sea life forms observed allows them to tolerate both the extremes in temperature and the high concentrations of heavy metals in emissions from the vents. Scientists who have eaten them say the shrimp are foul tasting because of the amount of hydrogen sulfide in their bodies. One spectacular discovery is a 50 million-year-old shrimp, believed to have been found only as a fossil, living on an underwater peak in the Coral Sea.