@mbari_news: Dancing deep-sea clams thrive on the seafloor off Southern California 🕺🏽⁠ ⁠ MBARI’s advanced underwater robots have filmed thousands of hours of deep-sea video. The team in MBARI’s Video Lab combs through this trove of footage to identify and label the animals and objects we observe as our scientists and engineers conduct their research. The team has gone deep into the vault to find some of their favorite moments in MBARI’s history of ocean exploration. ⁠ ⁠ While exploring the Santa Monica Basin 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) off the coast of Southern California in 2013, MBARI researchers encountered a bustling community of “dancing” cold seep clams (Ectenagena elongata). Cold seeps are fascinating marine habitats where water rich in chemicals slowly leaks out of the seafloor. Bacteria form the foundation of unique communities of life at deep-sea cold seeps. Clams, mussels, and worms host symbiotic bacteria that metabolize the methane, sulfides, and hydrogen percolating up through the mud.⁠ ⁠ The Ectenagena clams and other animals in this patch are surprisingly active despite living in the low-oxygen waters 640 meters (3,000 feet) underwater. The clams shelter chemosynthetic bacteria in their gills. They’re constantly repositioning themselves to reach the chemicals seeping out of the seafloor that their symbiotic bacteria convert to energy and food. A variety of organisms, like the scaleworms and snails perched on the clams, thrive in the habitat created by this dense patch of clams. #DeepSea #oceananimals #DeepOcean

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Wednesday 16 July 2025 00:21:53 GMT