Deep in the Gulf of Mexico
mussels crowd the submarine beaches of brine pools, and tube worms
flourishall without energy derived from the sun. Authors
Ian R. MacDonald and Charles Fisher and artist C. Bruce Morser
survey the creatures and the processes that sustain them.
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Like a spaceship on a strange planet, the Johnson-Sea-Link
submersible reaches for a sample of the mussels ringing a
pool of brine on the seafloor. The profusion of life 2,000 feet
(610 meters) below the surface astonished the scientists who discovered
this inhospitable world in 1984.
Photographs by Jonathan Blair
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