Question: how you found out anything amazing when you were looking at sea life?

Jon Copley answered on 22 Jun 2010:

We’ve recently found a species of animal thriving where previously no-one thought it could survive (and we’re still trying to figure out how!). I’m afraid I can’t say too much about it yet, because we haven’t published our results (in science you get into trouble if you “go public” with your results before other scientists have checked them) – but it’s like finding polar bears living in the Sahara desert. Hopefully we’ll publish those results later this year when we’ve finished our analysis, and that discovery may end up in the news when it’s announced – so I hope you’ll be able to read more about it then!

I’ve also found out that some deep-sea creatures still follow seasons in their life cycles, even though there are no “seasons” in the deep sea. That amazes me, because how can they know what season it is up here? They are so deep that they are far beyond the reach of sunlight, and they always have plenty of food all year round thanks to the underwater volcanoes where they live. So how can they tell what season it is?

I think that shows that the web of life on our planet is much more interconnected than we realised – and that species living even in the deepest, darkest corners of the ocean can still be affected by what happens at the surface. So we need to realise that any impact we have on the ocean (such as a huge oil spill…) can be far-reaching, and we need to treat our planet with respect.

But perhaps best of all, my colleagues and I also recently found a colony of deep-sea creatures living in an underwater crater where the conditions are unlike any we’ve seen before. They were a complete surprise, and the discovery means that there are probably lots more colonies out there like that, waiting to be found.