The site takes visitors on a virtual journey to hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean.
Hydrothermal vents are among the strangest features of the deep ocean and their existence was not known until the 1970s.
The hydrothermal vents, cold seeps and methane vents we shall shortly discover are all ecosystems which depend on chemical energy.
The latter is made up of six different instrument stations that gather data on plate tectonics, hydrothermal vents and deep sea creatures.
Bacteria would still be able to live in hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the oceans, kept going by heat generated radioactively in the earth's crust.
He described mining hydrothermal vents as "more invasive" because it would involve breaking up the uppermost metre of the sea floor and piping the rock fragments to the surface.
BBC: UK Seabed Resources joins deep-ocean mineral-mining rush
Karl Sakas had read an article in the Washington Post on hydrothermal vents several years ago, and wrote an essay which placed nationally in the duPont Challenge Essay Contest.
If exploitation has only just begun of life forms found in hydrothermal vents, cold seeps and similar deep-sea formations like mud volcanoes and brine pools, the same cannot be said for seamounts.
From being a totally unimaginable feature of the deep ocean throughout most of human history to being shown live on global television earlier this week, hydrothermal vents have never been so well understood.
These organisms, which have fundamentally different metabolisms to normal microbes, are found in hydrothermal vents on the deep-ocean floor and in rocks and springs hundreds of metres below the surface of the Earth.
BBC: NEWS | Science/Nature | Antarctica's resources 'at risk'
But many marine scientists and conservationists have warned that the implications of this deep-sea gold rush are not yet understood - and that mining nodules or hydrothermal vents could prove catastrophic for seabed ecology.
BBC: UK Seabed Resources joins deep-ocean mineral-mining rush
The worm's closest relatives, which also lack guts and mouths, live in deep-sea hydrothermal vents and rely on a different set of bacteria to allow them to survive in these hot and acidic conditions.
MSN: Zombie worm has no mouth �� but it feasts on whale bones
And if dead and decomposing bodies aren't your thing you can test your knowledge of the rules of taxonomic nomenclature by suggesting new names for five species of deep-sea worm, recently discovered around hydrothermal vents off Antarctica.
Here's one example why we should care: in 1977, diving in the human occupied vehicle Alvin, scientists investigating a volcanic ridge 2500 m (1.5 miles) below sea-level found something totally unexpected -- lush ecosystems thriving at hydrothermal vents fueled by chemical energy released from the Earth's interior.
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