The Guaymas Basin is a marginal

rift In geology, a rift is a linear zone where the lithosphere is being pulled apart and is an example of extensional tectonics. Typical rift features are a central linear downfaulted depression, called a graben, or more commonly a half-grabe ...

basin, the largest such basin in the

Gulf of California The Gulf of California ( es, Golfo de California), also known as the Sea of Cortés (''Mar de Cortés'') or Sea of Cortez, or less commonly as the Vermilion Sea (''Mar Bermejo''), is a marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean that separates the Baja Ca ...

. It consists of two axial troughs (northern and southern). The basin results from the activity of one of the several spreading centers in the Gulf. The basin is linked to the Carmen Fault to the south, and the

Guaymas Fault The Guaymas Fault, named for the city of Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico, is a major right lateral-moving transform fault which runs along the seabed of the Gulf of California. It is an integral part of the Gulf of California Rift Zone, the northern ext ...

to the north. The Guaymas seafloor has high heat flow,

hydrothermal Hydrothermal circulation in its most general sense is the circulation of hot water (Ancient Greek ὕδωρ, ''water'',Liddell, H.G. & Scott, R. (1940). ''A Greek-English Lexicon. revised and augmented throughout by Sir Henry Stuart Jones. with th ...

plumes, and hydrocarbon seeps.

Features

Northern trough

Southern trough

Biology

Especially in the southern trough, the Guaymas Basin supports a unique and vibrant ecosystem.

Heterotrophs A heterotroph (; ) is an organism that cannot produce its own food, instead taking nutrition from other sources of organic carbon, mainly plant or animal matter. In the food chain, heterotrophs are primary, secondary and tertiary consumers, but ...

consume organic matter rained down from the productive surface waters, while chemolithoautotrophs metabolize chemicals in the reduced hydrothermal fluid (often cycling these chemicals with

syntrophic In biology, syntrophy, synthrophy, or cross-feeding (from Greek ''syn'' meaning together, ''trophe'' meaning nourishment) is the phenomenon of one species feeding on the metabolic products of another species to cope up with the energy limitations by ...

partners). Of note are the colonies of ''

Riftia ''Riftia pachyptila'', commonly known as the giant tube worm and less commonly known as the Giant beardworm, is a marine invertebrate in the phylum Annelida (formerly grouped in phylum Pogonophora and Vestimentifera) related to tube worms co ...

'' tubeworms, ''

Beggiatoa ''Beggiatoa'' is a genus of ''Gammaproteobacteria'' belonging the order ''Thiotrichales,'' in the ''Pseudomonadota'' phylum. This genus was one of the first bacteria discovered by Ukrainian botanist Sergei Sergei Winogradsky, Winogradsky. During ...

'' and other

microbial mats A microbial mat is a multi-layered sheet of microorganisms, mainly bacteria and archaea, or bacteria alone. Microbial mats grow at interfaces between different types of material, mostly on submerged or moist surfaces, but a few survive in deserts. ...

, and

thermophilic A thermophile is an organism—a type of extremophile—that thrives at relatively high temperatures, between . Many thermophiles are archaea, though they can be bacteria or fungi. Thermophilic eubacteria are suggested to have been among the earl ...

microbes that can withstand hydrothermal temperatures (here up to __ °C).

References

Geology of Mexico Plate tectonics Geography of Mexico Depressions of Mexico {{tectonics-stub