Our attention was then turned to gathering more specimens for our biologists. When we arrived, everyone was astonished to discover the once bare top was already thickly carpeted with palm worms and limpets. When deep sea hydrothermal vents were first discovered in the late 1970s, the thing that surprised scientists the most was the incredible amount of life found so far from sunlight. It was believed that anything that survives below this level would have to rely on dead or decaying matter falling from above. But within vent communities life is so abundant, many scientists on board say that its richness rivals that of the rainforest.
Tube worms are so numerous, that they themselves provide habitat for other critters.
Clumps of these worms that we recently brought to the surface were crawling with limpets, various species of snails, scale worms, palm worms, and pycnogonid sea spiders. It seems that life around the chimneys is limited only by the space available to them. In fact, upon observing Gwenen only four days after we removed her top, the surface of the stump was already completely covered by palm worms and limpets. On land and in the upper layers of the oceans, all living things ultimately get their energy from the sun. Living things that use the sun to make food through photosynthesis are called producers and supply energy for living things that cannot.