Until recently, scientists thought that all life was dependent on sunlight. All this changed with the discovery of hydrothermal vents. The first hydrothermal vent was discovered in February 1977 near the Galapagos Islands by a team of Woods Hole scientists. They were looking for heat. In the 1970s, climate scientists were puzzling over the problem of "missing heat." The Earth's mantle wasn't producing as much heat as they thought it should from radioactive decay. Clive Lister, a scientist from the University of Washington, suspected that the heat was being released into the ocean by deep sea vents. Ever since the 1880s, when a ship named *Vitaz* pulled up samples of water from depths of 2,000 feet that were strangely warmer than surface waters, we have known about unusually hot pockets of water in the oceans and seas. In 1964, the ship *Discovery* pulled up waters deep in the Red Sea that were 111 degrees Fahrenheit. The following year, the *Atlantis II* pulled up sediment from the bottom of the Red Sea that was 133 degrees Fahrenheit. When the Woods Hole scientists discovered the hydrothermal vent, they also saw clams and mussels. When they opened the first water sample from the vents, the air filled with the rotten-egg smell of hydrogen sulphide. In the years that followed, scientists discovered that bacteria living near the vents could combine oxygenated seawater and hydrogen sulfide to make simple sugars in a process called chemosynthesis. --- Source: [[Reference Notes/Books/How Far the Light Reaches|How Far the Light Reaches]]