by Michael Carroll

Everybody knows there’s a whole lot of life in the ocean. How did God say it in the Bible? “Let the water teem with living creatures,” (Genesis 1:20). And it happened—in a big way!

Whales and dolphins, tiny seahorses and giant gooey squid, weirdly cool rays and starfish. Scientists always thought the farther you get from the surface—and the sun’s energy—the less there is to eat. And the less there is to eat, the fewer creatures you find. Finally, you reach a place where light never reaches, so nothing is alive.

Scientists imagined the ocean floor looked like a desert with vast stretches of empty sand. They believed the seabed was lifeless as stone.

But God had surprises waiting at the bottom of the sea.

About 70 years ago, people started tooling around in deep-sea submersibles, and poof! All those ideas of a dead ocean floor went up in smoke (you’ll see what I mean).

With vessels like Alvin (the sub that first visited the wreck of the Titanic), scientists were able to check out a new and alien world 12,000 feet beneath our boat-bottoms.

Around 25 years ago researchers exploring vast undersea deserts came upon volcanic chimneys belching black smoke into the chilled water.

Scientists call these seagoing smokestacks hydrothermal vents. The vents are born at the edges of Earth’s tectonic plates, where continents move apart, bump into each other and spew searing water, sometimes as hot as 750º F.

The water doesn’t boil because of the high pressure in the deep sea. As lava from inside the earth hits the ocean water, it turns into black smoke. Chimneys grow atop the hydrothermal vents. They rise up in stony spires, blobs and delicate curtains. Some chimneys grow 20 feet high in just a year. One chimney, called Godzilla, rose 15 stories before it collapsed, but it is growing again as you read this story.

The vents are so deep that the water pressure around them could crush a car like a soda can. But in this high pressure and frigid darkness, God’s secret underwater gardens grow.

In these gardens, creatures live. Lots of them! And they are mega-bizarro.

Take the tube worm, just for starters. It can grow 8 feet long, and it looks like a gigantic lipstick. Reddish feathery gills stick out of a long white tube, gathering nutrients from the hot stream that blows out of the vents. A tube worm has no eyes, mouth or stomach! It just soaks up the minerals coming from the hydrothermal vents.

God has more surprises in store. Foot-long clams bask in the boiling brew, kept company by strange one-eyed shrimp.

Why are they strange?

Good question. Their one eye is on their back! Blind crabs scamper around in the darkness, munching on the clams. But the hottest guy around is a tiny floating worm. The 5-inch long Pompeii worm wears a Mohawk of frilly bacteria on its back and lives in water as hot as 176º F!

The ocean floor seems as hostile and lifeless as a baking desert. But in the crushing pressure, near-freezing (and super hot) water and total darkness, you can find gardens of life.

God is like that. God’s creation shows us that He brings life where there is death and desolation. Living things thrive in the darkness two miles under the ocean’s surface—far away from sunlight and food. They have a source of energy that gives them life, but they must stay near the life-giving vents or they will die.

Sometimes the world seems like a cold, dark place to us, too. Pressure comes at us from all sides to cheat, steal, lie and go against God’s Word. But God is a warm, life-giving source of energy.

We can stay near Him by talking to Him (that’s what prayer is!), reading His Word (the Bible) to learn about Him and His plan for us and spending time with good friends (that’s church) who hold us up in those dark times.

With God, even the coldest, darkest places can be filled with life and warmth!

	Q: What did one lightbulb say to the other one? A: “Watt are you doing?” Charles R., 10, Georgia Clubhouse Jr. Click here to subscribe