The researchers participating in the research cruise ranged in disciplines from ichthyologists to sonar engineers. The U.S. scientific team, led by Dr. Peter Vogt of NRL's Marine Geosciences Division, had several objectives on this trip. These worms live inside quill-like thin tubes, and lack eye, mouth, and anus. They live with the help of bacteria living symbiotically in their guts. The bacteria take the methane brought up by the worm from the mud below, and combine it with oxygen diffusing through the worm's tube from the surrounding water.
Small fish eat the tubeworms and other small animals in the mud.
Skates, in turn, eat the small fish. Another objective on the trip was to study methane hydrates, whose presence in the subseafloor affects long-range sound propagation, and also which are a potential future carbon fuel source. Methane as gas or in solution is widespread in the sediments below the sea floor, shallow or deep. However, in the sediments below the deep ocean, the methane combines with water to form an icelike substance called methane hydrate, which is stable at high pressures. On an earlier cruise, NRL scientists had photographed white material on the mud volcano, thinking that it might be gas hydrates.