The First Dive to the Lost City The bizarre hydrothermal vent
field discovered a little more than two years ago surprised
scientists not only with vents that are the tallest ever seen
--the one that's 18 stories dwarfs most vents at other sites by
at least 100 feet -- but also because the fluids forming these
vents are heated by seawater reacting with million-year-old
mantle rocks, not by young volcanism. The field is unlike any
seen before, according to chief scientist Deborah Kelley, a
University of Washington associate professor of oceanography,
and co-chief scientist Jeff Karson, a Duke University professor
of earth and ocean sciences. Both have visited fields of black-
smoker hydrothermal vents that scientists have been studying
since the 1970s. Now the two scientists who were the first to
travel in a submersible to the field after its serendipitous
discovery Dec. 4, 2000, are leading a National Science
Foundation-funded expedition to map and further investigate the
field. The 'Atlantis Diaries' chronicle