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Adventure Bank and the Malta Plateau), such type of specialized deep-water cold-seep
communities encompasses thiotrophic chemosymbiotic organisms (e.g. empty tubes of the
vestimentiferan Lamellibrachia sp.; loose and articulated shells of lucinids, Lucinoma kazani,
Myrtea amorpha; vesicomyids, Isorropodon perplexum and gastropods (Taranis moerchi). A
callianassid decapod (Calliax sp.) was consistently found alive in large numbers in the
pockmark mud.
Their post-mortem calcified parts mixed with molluscs and subordinately miliolid foraminifers
form a distinct type of skeletal assemblage. It was found that the fluid seepage of this
pockmark site has episodically sustained thiotrophic macrobenthic communities since the
end of the Younger Dryas stadial up to sub-recent times.

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