Cold Seep

Cold seeps, cold vents, cold seeps or cold seeps are sources in the sea, where " cold " water (not heated) from the underground emerges. Contrast can be measured at the also observed on the seafloor hydrothermal vents, including the black smokers, up to 400 ° C hot spring water.

Description of the main types

Groundwater sources

In the vicinity of a coastal fresh water can escape under the water surface from a source into the sea. Such source areas are located, for example, in the Mississippi Delta and the Niger Delta.

Methane sources

Main article: Methane Source

In the sediment of the sea floor and in the underlying oceanic crust almost two million cubic kilometers of water are suspected, caused by, for example, tectonic movements of the seabed in a subduction zone, can issue forth from the underground. This is done partly in the area of ​​the accretionary wedge, a wedge-shaped accumulation of deferred sediments to a smaller submarine mountains. Here, the pore water is squeezed from the originally very watery sediments. In addition, a diagenetic transformation of loose sediment to sedimentary rock and the dissolution of gas hydrates cold seeps trigger. On continental slopes also find cold springs, in which case the sea water comes from deeper sediment layers.

In this source hydrogens such as dissolved methane and hydrogen sulfide, which is why in these places even at the base of the dark deep sea is a very tailored to this environment ecosystem can occur. Here are example beard worms and clams that live in symbiosis with bacteria. These microorganisms can gain through chemosynthesis their energy from those substances that are dissolved in the water of the cold seeps. Such communities can take the necessary energy for survival, comparable to the biological communities at black smokers, directly from within the earth and are thus independent of the solar energy.

The area of ​​the cold springs is characterized that separates to calcite and aragonite compensation depth - calcium carbonate in the crusts and that gas hydrates can be found.

Saline solution

Due to rising fossil horizons salt ( salt dome ), a salt solution (brine) may well be from the seabed (English: brine seep ). Since water with a high salt content is heavier than normal sea water, these sols can run in depressions on the sea floor, where salt ponds (English: brine pools ) form. In the Gulf of Mexico, there are several such salt ponds. Your chemistry has not yet been explored. On the edge of some salt pond clams live together with methane- loving bacteria, if the brine is enriched with methane.

Gas and oil deposits

Sometimes may arise as a byproduct of natural gas or oil production cold seeps. Therefore, they are called in English Oil - Field Brines.