Comment Re:Why is this a surprise? (Score 3, Insightful) 79
Considering all the extreme places we've found life on earth, I would actually have expected to find some.
I'm not a subject matter expert; but my surprise isn't "life"(there's some sort of extremophilic bacterium cracking molecules that would make a biologist cry and only a chemist would identify as a possible energy source basically anywhere we've been able to look); but that it's big, energetic life.
These probably aren't the world's peppiest fish; but even so, a fish is a big, demanding, multicellular, operation. Some sort of spore-former bacterium that wakes up and divides a couple of times every decade or two is one thing; but fish populations mean a fair amount of active cellular metabolism swimming around in what you would expect to be a very low-energy zone.