Cold seep facts for kids

A cold seep (sometimes called a cold vent) is an area of the ocean floor where hydrogen sulfide, methane and other hydrocarbon-rich liquids leak out of the Earth's crust, often in the form of a brine pool. Cold seeps form a biome supporting several native species.

Cold seeps change the shape of the ocean floor over time, where reactions between methane and seawater create carbonate rock formations and reefs. These reactions may change when bacteria are present.

Types

These craters mean a brine pool has formed here. Salt from brine pools seeps through the seafloor and covers the nearby rock.

Cold seeps at different depths have different names. Other kinds of cold seeps are:

• oil/gas seeps
• gas seeps: methane seeps
• gas hydrate seeps
• brine seeps are forming brine pools
• pockmarks
• mud volcanos

Formation and ecological succession

Cold seeps occur over cracks in the seafloor caused by the movement of the Earth's crust. Oil and methane "seep" out of those cracks, get dissolved by tiny bits of rock, and emerge over an area several hundred meters wide.

Methane (CH₄) is the main part of what we commonly refer to as natural gas. But in addition to being an important energy source for humans, methane also forms the basis of a cold seep ecosystem.

Images for kids

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  Bacterial mat consisting of sulfide-oxidizing bacteria Beggiatoa spp. at a seep on Blake Ridge, off South Carolina. The red dots are range-finding laser beams.

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  A mussel bed at the edge of the brine pool

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  The benthic filter reduces the flux of methane from the seafloor to the above water column

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  Lamellibrachia tube worms and mussel at a cold seep
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  The manned submersible DSV Alvin, which made possible the discovery of chemosynthetic communities in the Gulf of Mexico in 1983.

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  Chemosynthetic communities in the northern part of Gulf of Mexico around cold seeps known in 2000

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  Chemosynthetic communities in the northern part of Gulf of Mexico around cold seeps known in 2006 include more than 50 communities

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  The mussel species Bathymodiolus childressi is the dominant species in the mytilid type of cold seep communities in the Gulf of Mexico

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  Map of cold seeps in the Atlantic Equatorial Belt. BR – Blake Ridge diapir BT – Barbados trench OR – Orenoque sectors EP – El Pilar sector NIG – Nigerian slope GUI – Guiness area REG – Regab pockmark.

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  DSV Shinkai 6500

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  Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute has used remotely operated underwater vehicle Ventana in the research of Monterey Bay cold seeps

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  Late Cretaceous cold seep deposit in the Pierre Shale, southwest South Dakota

See also

In Spanish: Emanación fría para niños