Deep-sea hydrothermal vents and their associated fauna were first discovered along the Galapagos Rift in the eastern Pacific in 1977. Vents are now known to occur along all active mid ocean ridges and back-arc spreading centres, from fast to ultra-slow spreading ridges. The interest in chemosynthetic environments was strengthened by the discovery of chemosynthetic-based fauna at cold seeps along the base of the Florida Escarpment in 1983. Cold seeps occur along active and passive continental margins. More recently, the study of chemosynthetic fauna has extended to the communities that develop in other reducing habitats such as whale falls, sunken wood and areas of oxygen minima when they intersect with the margin or seamounts.
Since the first discovery of hydrothermal vents, more than 600 species have been described from vents and seeps. This is equivalent of 1 new description every 2 weeks(!). As biologists, geochemists, and physicists combine research efforts in these systems, new species will certainly be discovered. Moreover, because of the extreme conditions of the vent and seep habitat, certain species may have specific physiological adaptations with interesting results for the biochemical and medical industry.
These globally distributed, ephemeral and insular habitats that support endemic faunas offer natural laboratories for studies on dispersal, isolation and evolution. Here, hydrographic and topographic controls on biodiversity and biogeography might be much more readily resolved than in systems where climate and human activity obscure their role. In addition, hydrothermal vents have been suggested to be the habitat of the origin of life. These hypotheses are being used by ChEss researchers in collaboration with NASA to develop programmes to search for life in planets or moons of the outer space.