As usual, biology has proven to be far more complex than one expects. One doesnt think the dark depths of the ocean could support anything but chemosynthesis…however :
Grow in the Dark: Bottom-dwelling bacterium survives on geothermal glow
A microbe discovered in the deepest, darkest reaches of the Pacific Ocean makes its living in an unlikely way—by photosynthesis. The newly described species, announced in the June 28 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, uses faint light emitted by deep-sea hydrothermal vents to power its metabolism.
Story here…
And if that isn’t interesting enough (!) :
Deep sea predator creates red light zone
A voracious relative of the jellyfish, which uses fluorescent red tentacles to entice prey to a stinging death, has been discovered deep in the ocean. The scarlet lures on this fragile predator suggests that red light, thought to be invisible to animals at these depths, may in fact be important in deep sea ecology.
“Researchers expect to see red light so little that they actually examine deep sea animals under red lamps. But that exposes and destroy the red visual pigments,” says co-author Casey Dunn at Yale University, New Haven, US. “Finding red lures really implies we need to take a much closer look at animals to see if they can see in the red.”
