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“OK, we’re 8,000 feet deep now...Hey, there’s something on the bottom that looks like twisted stone chimneys with some kind of hot fluid jetting out from the top...Wait a minute...there’s all kinds of animals down here; giant clams and huge red worms sticking out of eight-foot-long tubes...Believe me, no one has ever seen anything like this before...“These observations, made on February 17, 1977 aboard the deep-diving submarine Alvin, were one of the biggest scientific discoveries of the last century: a totally new ecosystem thriving at near-freezing temperatures in the total darkness of the deep Pacific Ocean, and under water pressure more than 275 times greater than the pressure at sea level. These ecosystems, now called “hydrothermal vent communities,” do not depend upon green plants and sunlight for their food. Instead, they are able to use chemicals in the hot fluids pouring out of the twisted stone “chimneys.” 

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What You Will Do

Make a three-dimensional 

model of a giant tubeworm

Weird, Red, and Slightly Gross

This process is called hydrothermal vent anthese chemicals all by have partnerships wibacteria. The tubewolarge organ called a tchemosynthetic bactmouth, stomach, or ilong tentacles that stube. Inside the tentcontains hemoglobin can absorb chemicalwater. The blood carrbacteria living in the produce food that prtubeworm. In 2002, 2006, and 20expeditions to the Galawhere hydrothermal velinks below for more on 

oceanexplorer.noaa

ex1103/logs/pho

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oceanexplorer.noaa

pagos/logs/photo
noaa.gov

Discover Your World With NOAA

52

What You Will Need

1. Materials that can represent parts of the 

tubeworm (see the drawing below). Here are some ideas, but with a little imagination you can probably fi nd lots of other things to use:

• Cardboard tubes (mailing tubes or paper 

towel rolls) for the trunk and tube

• Pipe cleaners for tentacles• Modeling clay or papier mâché (newspaper and glue made from fl our and 

water) for the vestimentum

• Sponge for the trophosome• Small corks or pieces of round cereal can 

represent bacteria

2. Other supplies: glue, scissors, poster board, 

colored markers, and/or spray paint

3. Optional: a rotten egg in a tightly-closed jar

How to Do It

Since most of a tubeworm is hidden inside the tube, you should build your model as a “cutaway” (also called a cross section) so that the major structures can be seen. Here are the parts of a tubeworm that should be included in your model:• Tentacles – All the tentacles together 

are called the “plume”; these should be colored red, since they contain hemoglobin.

• Vestimentum – This is a muscular structure 

that has several functions:

– It helps to hold the worm in its tube;– It generates new tube material;

– It contains pores that release sperm or 

eggs during spawning; 

– It contains the tubeworm’s version of a 

heart and a brain.

• Trophosome – This dark green-brown organ has 

a spongy texture, and contains bacteria that use oxygen, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen 

Tubeworm

sulfi de to make fas the worm; be sthat represents bof bacteria in the need to include a

 A very noticeable 

is their smell. Onchemosynthetic bwhich is what mathey do. If you wayour model, you segg (or other soua glass jar with a control the smell

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Blood Vessel

Vestimemtum

Heart

Trophosome

Tube

Body Cavity (inside the Trunk)

Opisthosome

• Trunk 

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• Tube 

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• Opist

the tubthe 
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53

SCIENCE | Service | Stewardship 

Want to Do More?1. Visit www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewArticle.

do?id=2400 to find out about black smokers 

(the “chimneys” around hydrothermal vents that emit hot fluids). 

2. Visit oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/edu/themes/

vents-and-volcanoes/welcome.html for more 

information and activities on hydrothermal vent communities.

3. Visit www.divediscover.whoi.edu/vents/index.

html to learn more about the discovery of 

hydrothermal vents, including recordings of scientists aboard the submarine Alvin.

4. Visit oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/

explorations/02fire/logs/magicmountain/welcome.html for fly-through movies of the 

Magic Mountain hydrothermal vent site on Explorer Ridge (in the northeastern Pacific Ocean, about 150 miles west of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada).

This activity is adapted from “Let’s Make a Tubeworm!”, a lesson from the Ocean Explorer 2002 Gulf of Mexico Expedition: oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/02mexico/

background/edu/media/gom_tube_gr56.pdf); by Mel 

Goodwin, PhD, Marine Biologist and Science Writer, Mt. Pleasant, SC.

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