Deepest Hydrothermal Vent, or "Black Smoker" - Video

"First images of world's deepest known black smokers, taken by HyBIS"

expeditionlog, YouTube (April 11, 2010)
video, no sound, 0:40

"Our underwater vehicle HyBIS films the world's deepest known 'black smoker' vents for the first time, 3.1 miles deep in the Cayman Trough"

There's no ambient sound, no dramatic music, no portentous (pretentious?) narrator's voice-over. This is, in a way, the scientific community's equivalent of a home movie.

And it includes some impressive footage of the deepest active hydrothermal vent known.

That's a fairly big deal, as this post explains:

"Deepest Black Smoker Discovered in Caribbean"
Earth News, Discovery News (April 12, 2010)

"Over three miles down in the ocean, where the Caribbean Sea's warm blue waters fade into lightless black, scientists have found something bizarre and wonderful: the deepest active hydrothermal vent system on the planet.

"The science crew aboard the Royal Research Ship James Cook are currently at sea exploring the Cayman Trough, the deepest ocean ridge on Earth. While diving last week, their state-of-the-art autonomous submarine, Autosub6000, discovered chemical indicators in the water column suggesting something was boiling down on the floor below...."

Hydrothermal vents were the first place we found life that doesn't depend on sunlight for energy - directly, as plants do, or indirectly, as just about everything else does.

They're also interesting as geological oddities.