New Lost City Rumblers

Lost City, the wonderful hydrothermal feature on the deep Atlantic floor, is not a sulfide "black smoker" but a carbonate white one. It was built quite differently than the typical black smoker. Lost City is a new manifestation of one of my favorite secret geochemical processes: serpentinization. Not only does it help deliver water to the mantle via subduction zones, but now we know it can trigger hydrothermal activity away from spreading ridges. It's another link in the weird chain that includes black smokers, cold seeps and whale falls.