"Re-writing Terms of Existence" by Liz Talbot

Ninety percent of animals living in the deep sea create their own light. This makes bio luminescence the most used form of communication in the world…Awesome.

I watched a lecture entitled Exploring the Ocean’s Hidden Worlds presented by the oceanographer Robert D. Ballard, presented at a TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference in February 2008. Ballard’s talk focused on the deep sea and the depth of information that is still unknown, though I knew very little about the deep-sea at that time, it opened a door to ideas that I have since been investigating in my work, using deep-sea imagery as a metaphor for that which has yet to be explored. More time and money has been spent investigating space than exploring what still lies uncovered here on our planet. The oceans offer ninety-nine percent of the area in which life can develop on Earth. The deep sea occupies eighty-five percent of this area, making up the planet’s largest habitat. Currently, only about five percent of the seafloor has been mapped with any reasonable degree of detail.

Ballard, who discovered hydrothermal vents, shocked the scientific world in 1977 changing the way we define life and its origins. Up until this time it was widely believed that all life ultimately relied on the sun. Vent ecosystems are born by the process chemosynthesis in which energy is derived from carbon dioxide and water, producing sulfur gas instead of oxygen. Bacteria use sulfur in the form of hydrogen sulfide to build sugars which in turn provides for abundant and diverse communities on the seafloor.^{, via} Some scientists believe that the first molecules of life evolved at these deep ocean vents through chemosynthesis. It is also hypothesized that chemosynthesis could be providing life on other celestial bodies, namely Mars and Jupiter’s moon, Europa.

Life is more creative than we thought.

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Youngbluth, Marsh, “The Nocturnal Ballet of Deep Sea Creatures,” in The Deep, ed. Claire Nouvian (Chicago & London 2007), 93

Nouvian, Claire. “Introduction,” in The Deep, ed. Claire Nouvian (Chicago & London 2007), 18

Barry, Patrick L., “Life As We Didn’t Know It,” Science at Nasa

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast13apr_1.htm

^via Tyson, Peter, “Living at Extremes,” Nova Into the Abyss, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/abyss/life/extremes.html

Debruyeres, Daniel, “Hydrothermal Vents,” in The Deep, ed. Claire Nouvian (Chicago & London 2007), 121

Brill, Richard, “Earth's unique circumstances let life survive,” Star Bulletin,

http://www.starbulletin.com/columnists/factsofthematter/20090201_Earths_unique_circumstances_let_life_survive.html