Well inside the Arctic Circle, scientists have found black
smoker vents farther north than anyone has ever seen before. The
cluster of five vents — one towering nearly four stories in
height — are venting water as hot as 570 F. Dissolved sulfide
minerals that solidify when vent water hits the icy cold of the
deep sea have, over the years, accumulated around the vent field
in what is one of the most massive hydrothermal sulfide deposits
ever found on the seafloor, according to Marvin Lilley, a UW
oceanographer. He’s a member of an expedition led by Rolf
Pedersen, a geologist with the University of Bergen’s Centre for
Geobiology, aboard the research vessel G.O. Sars. The vents are
located at 73 degrees north on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between
Greenland and Norway. That’s more than 120 miles from the
previous northernmost vents found during a 2005 expedition, also
led by Pedersen. Other scientists have detected plumes of water
from hydrothermal vents even farther north but have been unable
to find the vent fields