Deep sea life can 'hitchhike' to new areas

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CHICAGO, May 24 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists studying life around deep-sea vents say some species have hitchhiked on their submersibles to new areas and may damage ecosystems.

Writing in the journal Conservation Biology, researchers say some hardy species can survive the extreme change in pressure that occurs when a research submersible return to the surface.

They reported that after using the manned submersible Alvin to collect samples of species from the Juan de Fuca Ridge under the northeastern Pacific Ocean, the discovered 38 deep-sea limpets, Lepetodrilus gordensis, among their samples, a species believed to occur only in the vents of the Gorda Ridge 400 miles south of the dive site.

"The big question was, how did they get over 600 kilometers from their habitat?" Janet Voight from the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago said. "We discovered that the individuals must have been transported from the Gorda Ridge by our submersible.

"Even though we clean the submersibles after sampling we had assumed that the extreme pressure change would kill any species which are missed."

Until now hydrothermal vents have been considered too extreme and too isolated to be a source of accidentally introduced species, the researchers said.

"We've discovered that it is possible to accidentally introduce a species, and any potential diseases it may carry, from a deep-sea vent to a new location," Voight said. "This has implications for the future exploration of hydrothermal vents as it reveals the potential risk of human-driven change to the ecosystem."