While exploring deep-sea mud volcanoes near Trinidad and Tobago, researchers aboard the vessel Nautilus made an unexpected discovery: a methane bubble seep surrounded by an unbelievably huge field of mussels.

The mussel multitudes lie near a subduction boundary (where one plate of the earth's crust slides under another), a common location for mud volcanoes. As the rocky sediment gets compressed, the liquids trapped inside it erupt (much like lava)! As you can imagine, a methane-saturated mud volcano is no easy place to live ... Unlike those you would find on the beach, hardcore deep-sea mussels rely on special bacteria to produce energy from the gasses released by the seeps.