On land, we think of worms as animals that burrow into the dirt or under leaf piles and the like. Out here where there is only rocky basalt on the bottom, the worms have to be a bit more creative. Alvinellid worms secrete their own tubes on the outide of chimneys within the vent fields. From the videos or out the portholes in Alvin, the tubes make the chimney appear to be a white mass instead of the bare, black sulfide.

The Pompei worm (Alvinella pompejana) is one the Alvinellids found here at 9 North that lives on the chimneys. In addition to creating wonderfully beautiful tubes, the Pompei worm also has a white, furry coat on its outside that are filamentous bacteria.

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The role of these bacteria is not entirely clear, but one hypothesis is that they detoxicify the vent fluid for the worms. As part of her thesis research, Carol Di Meo from the University of Delaware has been looking at the chemistry within the Alvinellid tubes to examine this hypothesis. In addition to taking small water samples from inside the tubes, Carol is also trying to grow the filamentous bacteria to determine what types of chemicals they might use in their metabolism. So far she's had some success growing bacteria, but she will not know if she has the ones that she is interested in until she returns to Delaware.