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1 Institute of Oceanographic Sciences, Deacon Laboratory, Wormley, Surrey GU85UB, UK
2 Department of Earth Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK
3 Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Citadel Hill, Plymouth PL1 2PB, UK
Hydrothermal venting at mid-ocean ridges has become one of the fastest growing areas of interest in the marine sciences since its discovery in the late seventies. In tandem with the value of our increased knowledge of geological processes at actively spreading plate boundaries, we have been able to focus on the impact of the vent products on the global ocean chemical budget itself. The recognition that complex vent communities consisting of bizarre organisms dependent on geochemically-based chemosynthesis thrive in the extreme conditions of temperature, pressure and chemistry at the ridges, then go on to disperse and colonize new sites has undoubtedlyled to novel and challenging research directions, but the very isolation of these communities over millions of years has led to suggestions that they may in themselves hold some of the keys to an understanding of the earliest evolutionary stages of life processes on the earth as a whole. Processes at mid-ocean ridge systems are four-dimensional in their character, with some events varying on a daily scale and others over a few hundreds or thousands of years. This volume represents the most recent reviews and reports of the latest advances in understanding of an area of marine science which we are only just beginning to recognize the scope and significance of.
The intense efforts which have been made over the past decade and a half have come some way to answering key questions which geologists, chemists and biologists have pointed to in the science of mid-ocean ridge hydrothermal activity.
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