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Plume This soft, bright-red structure serves the same purpose as a mouth would if the tubeworm had one. It sucks in the ingredients that the microbes living in the  worm's body will use to fashion its food. These three ingredients—oxygen and carbon dioxide in seawater and hydrogen sulfide in the superheated water erupting from the vent or black smoker—tend to react violently when they come into contact with each other. Yet using special hemoglobins in its blood-rich plume (hence the red color), the tubeworm has found a way to transport the ingredients in its blood without this reaction taking place—and without the toxic hydrogen sulfide poisoning it, as it would you or me. |
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