but why not just keep the vents on the seafloor…no boat is needed.

...

Yes, you can not "move" a geothermal vent from the ocean floor, and especially not onto a boat...

The boat is what's needed to sink the equipment deep to the ocean floor.

I think the real problem is, you don't know what a geothermal vent actually is.

https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/deep-sea-hydrothermal-vents/

The entire reason these are perfect is it's near boiling water surrounded by deep sea near frozen temps. You don't get that anywhere near a shore. And even if you did, doing it 20 miles or 200 miles from any shore is the same amount of effort.

But I got to tap out here